


godforsaken mess

by hoko_onchi



Series: a panoply of song [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eliot Waugh's Canonically Huge Dick, Hopeful Ending, Infidelity, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mosaic Timeline (The Magicians: A Life in the Day), Mutual Pining, Quentin and Eliot's Canonically Poor Decision Making Skills, Quentin and Eliot’s Canonically Poor Communication Skills, Smut, illicit affairs - Taylor Swift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:22:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/pseuds/hoko_onchi
Summary: Eliot is startled, maybe, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t push Quentin off the bed. There’s a furrow in his brow. His lips are pink and wet, his cheeks wearing a slight flush. Something breaks open on his face, like light trying to peek through a boarded-up, forgotten window. “Q,” he starts. “We shouldn’t.”NotI don’t want youorGet the fuck off of me. Just:We shouldn’t.He cups the nape of Eliot’s neck, fingers tangling in his curls. “I just—I miss you.”Something terribly conflicted blooms over Eliot’s face, and he rumbles, low in his throat. “This is a—” He brushes his lips featherlight against Quentin’s, sighing into his mouth. “—terrible idea. What—what are you doing? You don’t—you don’twantthis.”Quentin chases Eliot’s mouth, kissing him harder, more insistent. He pulls the bow of Eliot’s lips between his teeth. “I want youall the time. Wanna feel how bad I want you?” Quentin’s voice isrough, ragged. Eliot has always liked this, feeling how hard he gets, how much hewants. For Quentin, it never really stopped, stirring in the background, a restless eddy of attraction.
Relationships: Arielle/Quentin Coldwater, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: a panoply of song [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939063
Comments: 64
Kudos: 179
Collections: A Million Little Times





	godforsaken mess

**Author's Note:**

> Okay folks, I've never written anything this angsty. it is absolutely new, and I 100% blame Taylor Swift, _folklore_ , and 'illicit affairs' for my decision to write this. I know infidelity is a trigger for some, so I'd avoid this if it is for you. Good news, everyone! The rest of my fics are mostly soft and fluffy and full of smut. 
> 
> Herein: references to Quentin’s canonical mental illness and suicidal ideation (not intense; mostly not taking care of himself-related). There are also a lot of really bad decisions. 
> 
> I am planning to make this the beginning of a series. I'd love a kudo or comment if you care to leave one. Thanks for reading, and be gentle with yourselves.
> 
> Thank you to so many people. To my betas, Rubickk and Jessalae for your ideas, hard work, and encouragement. Thanks to RedBlazer and AmbiguousPenny for reading ahead of time to cheer me on. Thanks to Mizzy and Akisazame and TheAuditty for listening to the various stages of my breakdown over this fic. Thanks to the peaches and plums for being amazing.

Quentin has one remaining, intact nerve, and this morning, Eliot is ripping it to shreds.

Since Teddy recently decided that sleeping is for suckers, Quentin is functioning on two hours of sleep, still swaying like he’s been on a boat, carrying a clingy three-foot dictator on his hip. Ari woke everyone up just after sunrise to go to the first day of Harvest Market. It’s a seasonal family event, a big fucking Fillory deal—they need wool for winter cloaks, new boots, seedlings for the winter garden, cranberries for preserves. So Quentin plasters on a smile, makes himself a tea of feverfew and peppermint for his burgeoning headache, and preps their cart, hitching it up to their donkey, Violet, who looks about as excited for Market as Quentin does.

“Is the Dowager Countess ready for departure?” Eliot speaks directly to the donkey, bypassing Quentin. He strokes her nose and feeds her a handful of oats. The donkey practically swoons over Eliot, pressing her nose to his shoulder, even though Quentin’s the one who feeds her and exercises her and puts blankets over her when it’s cold. In thanks, Violet tries to bite Quentin at least fifty percent of the time.

It’s fine—that’s _fine_. It’s fine that Arielle and Teddy are the same fucking way with Eliot. It’s fine that Eliot has, like—six ex-boyfriends of various ages and descriptions who run stands at the market. 

That’s how it’s happened, with Quentin becoming sudden-husband-and-father, his entire brain immersed in parenthood, barely coming up for air in the three years since Teddy was born. He and Eliot aren’t what they were anymore—whatever it was that they were. Quentin has a wife and a son; he lives in the actual fantasy world of his dreams. He should be happy. It’s fine. 

Instead of happiness, he wakes to a low-grade dissatisfaction each day, an itch he can’t scratch, a little voice that says there’s something _missing_. 

When he watches Eliot hoist Teddy into the cart, when he listens to Eliot singing—“Dear Theodosia” for Teddy, “I Dreamed a Dream” for Ari—as they walk with Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, he can almost see the shape of it, the nameless thing that keeps irking him. It’s been sitting with him for years now, hibernating, awakening now to come up for air, like a frog, sleepy and unfrozen, emerging from the warm earth. There’s something unsettling in the pinpricks of thought coming to life in his mind as he walks behind Eliot, watches his long legs. He’s a husband, a father. He has everything he needs, everything he _wants_. The idea that there’s something festering beneath the surface is _traitorous_. He could put a name to it if only—

But Eliot’s vibrato is drilling a hole in the migraine brewing behind his left eye, so he focuses on the road. It’s not worth examining the cause of Quentin’s malaise; he should be used to it by now, anyway.

The Harvest Market is crowded—it’s like the state fairs his dad took him to as a kid, but it’s _more_ since the people and animals of Plum Hill don’t have ComicCon or fucking college sports or the prom. There are tinkers and merchants from all over Fillory, some from as far away as Loria. Ari puts a cranky Teddy in the linen sling Eliot made for her—he’s always _making_ things; he just knows how to _do stuff_. It’s irritating. Ari kisses both Quentin and Eliot on the cheek before she goes off to talk with her social circle of moms—which includes a brown bear with twin cubs and an otter with her—pups? He thinks they’re pups. 

“You know, it’s still funny how Ari, like, socializes with the talking animals,” he says to Eliot. “I always forget and then I see her like—joking with an aardvark.”

When he turns, Eliot is already walking in the direction of the blacksmith’s stand, his eyes on the smith’s apprentice, who has delicate features and shiny dark hair pulled into a ponytail. He’s somehow both slender and muscular; even from here, Quentin can see the young man has sculpted arms, a trim waist. 

And that’s _fine_ , too. It’s fine that Eliot didn’t hear Quentin; that’s nothing. And of course, it’s more than fine that Eliot’s talking to his _friend_ , or whatever he is. Quentin crosses his arms and leans back against the cart. The rickety thing shifts and he stumbles backwards, barely catching himself. The Dowager Countess lets out a disgruntled _hawww_ , and Quentin sighs somewhat dramatically. He fucking hates how much this donkey fucking hates him. 

When his gaze lands back on the blacksmith’s stand, Eliot is _behind_ the table, cupping the apprentice’s neck, his other hand already beneath his shirt, resting against his flat stomach. Eliot’s talking to him in a hushed voice, lips close to his ear. Something flips over in Quentin’s stomach, and he busies himself in organizing their grain and vegetable bags. He’s the one who has to do the weekly shopping, so he can fucking do that instead of watch Eliot go about his seduction hobby. His summer fling must be over now. Like his clothes, Eliot tends to change the aesthetic of his lovers each season. It seems he’s going with _young and lithe_ this autumn. Quentin hears it goes well with linen.

Quentin snorts—it’s funny; that’s _funny_. He’ll have to tell Ari he thought of that. She loves teasing Eliot about his boyfriends, and hey, Quentin can join in. It’s harmless, all in _good fun_. It’s a thing in their lives; it’s just that Quentin’s started to notice it more now that he’s coming out of the haze of early parenthood. That’s all. 

It’s not like he didn’t notice before. He’s always _noticed_. It’s more that—before, he had the comfort of Eliot’s friendship in the wake of losing him as something more. He feels, now, more kinship with Eliot’s discarded men than he does with Eliot himself.

When he’s got the cart set up to his satisfaction, he takes a few bags and starts walking to the farmers’ side of the market. He stops when he spies Eliot greedily _making out_ with the dazed blacksmith’s apprentice, both of them stumbling, desperate, towards the tent behind his stand. That’s fine, but _Jesus_ , it’s nine in the goddamn morning.

When they disappear behind the tent flap, Quentin sees the shimmering weave of Eliot’s obscuring ward flash around the tent. If he hadn’t seen it before, he’d think it was a trick of the light. 

But Quentin’s seen it. His stomach drops at the visceral memory of Eliot throwing a ward up around their cart after the very first Harvest Market they attended; it was late, and Eliot had been feeling him up the whole day. Desperate, they couldn’t wait until they got home. Beneath the spell’s clever invisible shield, Quentin rode Eliot’s cock until he came, shaking and murmuring his name. That time is over, he reminds himself. It’s over, and it’s fine.

Quentin is almost done with his shopping when the miller’s apprentice—it’s always fucking _apprentices_ —asks Quentin where Eliot is. They were supposed to meet today by the Lover’s Tree at the edge of Plum Grove Woods, and Eliot stood him up. He looks the boy over—slim and pretty with big dark eyes and bangs that fall over his eyes. He can’t be much older than twenty-three, which seems to be Eliot’s cut off these days. It seems he goes for the age range of _might have graduated from college, probably can’t do his own laundry_ in Earth terms.

“I’m sorry,” he finds himself telling the kid. “He’s—well, I saw him with—you know what? It doesn’t matter. Here’s a free tip—find yourself someone who won’t disappoint you like that.”

The boy is crying when he turns away, and he’s mad on his behalf, sweating and lugging bags of apples and carrots, a sack of hominy that weighs more than Teddy, and three bolts of hemp fabric, when he sees Eliot swanning toward the cart to deposit a small bag of candles; his lips are wet and red, his hair mussed, his shirt half-untucked. When he turns, he catches Quentin’s gaze and _smirks_. 

“Where the—fuck— _where the fuck_ have you been?” Quentin’s tone is a little _meaner_ than he intends, but the sentiment still stands. Eliot was in charge of wool and shoes, and the cart is empty save for the one small sack.

Eliot rolls his eyes and tucks in his shirt, exposing the lean expanse of his waist. His eyes very quickly rake over Quentin in that _assessing_ way he has. “I was tending to my _needs_. Which I have outside of this family. I’m going for the wool now.”

“You going to fuck the wool merchant, too?” Quentin drops the bolts of fabric in the cart, secures the food and grain so it won’t come flying out on the ride home. He _sort of_ regrets his words, but whatever—his head is pounding. He hates himself enough already; he won’t add this morning’s snarkiness to the pile of shit he’s already got in his brain. There’s enough there already.

“Of course not,” Eliot says breezily. “I came twice. Don’t think I can make it happen again.”

Quentin’s cheeks redden. He’s the one who mentioned it; he was asking for it. He hops down from the cart and heads for the booth that makes something a lot like funnel cakes, not looking back. When he senses a shadow at his side, he knows it’s Eliot. “Go away,” Quentin says.

“I’m _replenishing_ my calories—little worn out, you know.”

When Quentin looks up, he can’t quite read Eliot’s expression. Just a flash, a moment—anger, indignation, yeah. But something else too, something _lost_ or confused, maybe. It’s replaced with Eliot’s veneer almost instantly. 

“ _Please_ , stop,” Quentin says, his voice hoarse. He buys a heaping pile of Fillorian junk food, covers it with raspberry syrup, and marches to the cart, where he sits and shovels fried bread in his face, barely tasting it.

When they go home, Quentin walks a solid twenty feet behind the cart, watching the spectacle of Eliot teasing Arielle and singing to Teddy. The performance of it all. He has plenty of reasons to be mad at Eliot. For one, Eliot’s a _dick_. But he can’t shake the sharp, tugging sensation that’s been unfolding since he woke. There’s a niggling worry in the back of his mind that it’s related to Eliot—and not just Eliot, like as a _concept_ , as a person who exists in Quentin’s life. It’s Eliot as the ex-quasi-boyfriend he’s kept locked up in the basement of his soul, a cocooned desire that’s scrabbling inside its silk cage, waiting to emerge; a wet, dark birth.

~~***~~

Things devolve from there. It’s been two weeks, and Quentin—well, he speaks when Eliot asks him something about the mosaic. Otherwise, he’s kept his head down, away from Eliot’s searing gaze. The rhythmic beat of Eliot’s unwarranted spite has dulled to a low hum. 

“You act like you’re treading on a nest of bees,” Arielle says. “And you know what they say—”

“Uh,” Quentin says. He stops chopping potatoes—or, they’re sort of potato-parsnips, he thinks. He furrows his brows. “No, I really don’t know. What—what are we talking about?”

“—the queen will gouge out your eyes and run away with your head,” she finishes. Teddy clings to her leg, giggling, and she runs her slender fingers over his fat cheek. 

“Wow, that’s—that’s _graphic_.”

“That’s Fillorian bees for you,” she says. She kisses him on the cheek and picks Teddy up, whirling him around. Her hair falls like liquid fire over her shoulders. 

He pulls her into a kiss and presses his nose against her soft cheek. “But what does—what does that _mean_?” 

“ _Oh_ —like you’re walking around carefully because you don’t want to cause a big ‘blow up.’” She makes an explosion motion with her hands. He guesses she got that from Eliot teaching Teddy about fireworks.

“Yeah,” Quentin says, thoughtful, “I think that’s like ‘walking on eggshells.’”

“Why would _anyone_ walk on eggshells? That’s _ludicrous_. You’d break them!”

He laughs. “That’s kind of the point. Like, tread lightly or they’ll break. We don’t have the um, eye-gouging bees, though. That’s, uh, specific to Fillory.” He threads his fingers through her hair and lets it fall. Teddy clutches at his pants, and Quentin scoops him up. “But seriously—what were we talking about?”

“Oh—Eliot. You’re treading on a nest of bees whenever you’re around him. I know he can be... difficult.”

She has _no idea_ how difficult Eliot can be. How _trashy_ —well, it doesn’t matter to Quentin, anyway. He’s not a part of whatever it is that Eliot’s doing, what he’s _been doing_ since he told Quentin to go “merrily fuck his hetero crush.” In the time he was _hooking up_ with Eliot, he’d known they were going to be short lived. Quentin’s growing interest in Arielle had put a natural end to it, the old-fashioned way. And God, Quentin was nothing but fucking grateful for that. A _healthy_ relationship where _I love you_ isn’t verboten— _revolutionary_. He’d never had that, something real and healthy and _right_. He would have been stuck in that strange not-relationship with Eliot for the rest of his life if she hadn't come along, if Teddy hadn't happened. It was good that Ari got pregnant, a blessing. 

What he hadn’t banked on was Eliot being even _hotter_ four years down the road. And he’d never considered that Eliot’s boyfriend parade would bother him as much as it does. 

It’s natural, he rationalizes, that Eliot’s behavior bothers him. Quentin’s in _family mode_ ; his life is full of serious things, and Eliot’s isn’t. Eliot’s life is full of _fucking_. Sure, he’s been maybe a little _hesitant_ with Eliot since Harvest Market, but that’s because they’re not talking the way they used to. He needs to _fix their friendship_. He’s not ready to go there, not yet. Eliot hasn’t been helping matters by staring at Quentin while he’s working, his eyes hard. It makes him feel like Eliot _is_ a nest of bees with a vengeance-hungry queen.

“Uh, yeah. We had a _discussion_ at Market that day, and—we need to talk. Guess I don’t want the blow up part. You’re right.” 

“You’ll have plenty of time when I take Teddy to see Gatha, Cousin Teff, and Aunt Rose with Mother and Father.” Ari picks up the tuber peels and puts them in their compost bucket. “Promise me you’ll talk with him.”

Seriously, Quentin has no idea who half these fucking people are, so he just nods. The important thing is that Quentin will get to sleep without Teddy crawling on top of him three hours before dawn. He can agree to talk to Eliot if it means a few nights of uninterrupted sleep. “Yeah, totally. I will.” 

“I’ll pick up more apples at Market before I leave tomorrow. I know he likes to make that appley-crisper thing when I’m gone.” She scrunches up her nose like, _wow, apples and pastry; Earth people are weird._ It’s cute.

The apples won’t matter. Eliot hasn’t made apple crumble in two years, or if he has, it hasn’t been for Quentin.

~~***~~~

Eliot spends most of the next morning chatting with Ari about winterizing the cottage, explaining some of the spells he’s planning to use to expand the addition for extra space. Because Quentin is treading on a nest of bees, he doesn’t interfere. He notes, irritated, that Arielle is enthralled with Eliot’s description of the magic. Another thing he didn’t expect—his ex-whatever being friends with his wife. It’s stupid and annoying that he has any feeling at all about it, and Quentin is an adult, clearly, so he needs to stuff that useless emotion on the top shelf in a dusty corner of his mind. 

But—Eliot. _Eliot_ has decided to expand his dickish behavior to include stupid little quips when Quentin is trying to concentrate on recording their design for the day. Quentin’s tongue is poking out when he makes a row of blue marks. He leans back on the ladder and watches Eliot, his cheeks flushing slightly. Eliot is _shirtless_ at this point in the day and—his _ass_ —and Quentin full well knows he shouldn’t be thinking about it—is muscled and round and flexing as he bends over and places the last blue tiles into the pixelated pattern of an island atop ocean waves. 

When Eliot turns, his eyes meet Quentin’s, and his lips draw into a thin line. “What? Why is your face making that face?”

“It’s not.”

“It’s not what?” Eliot’s eyes are still and bright green in the late afternoon sun.

“It’s not—making a face. I’m not doing _anything_.” Quentin knows his face is doing something _._

“No, you’re not, are you? You’re not doing anything. Just… _watching_.” Eliot picks up his discarded shirt and wipes the sweat from his chest and the back of his neck. The small bit of softness he’d had around his middle when they got to the mosaic is long gone—seven years gone—replaced with hard lines cut tight against his frame. Eliot is never going to be musclebound; he’s long and willowy by nature. But his body has hardened, grown into something strong and useful. Quentin watches the muscles in Eliot’s abdomen contract and release when he stands, closing his eyes and putting his hands out above the completed design like he expects something to happen. He sighs and puts his hands on his slender hips. You know, after nothing _at all_ fucking happens.

_Passive aggressive. Asshole._

“It’s my day on the ladder. I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything,” Quentin snaps.

“That’s not what I meant, Q.” Eliot stretches, falling into warrior one or two, one long arm out in front of him like an arrow, one behind. Almost like he’s _showing off_. But he has the—whatever apprentice he’s fucking this week. So. _Surely_ he’s not showing off for Quentin. 

He thinks—for the thousandth time that week—that Ari really _shouldn’t_ love him. She doesn’t know that he thinks like this, that he wonders why Eliot stopped _wanting_ him, that he thinks about Eliot, almost exclusively these days, when he fantasizes. Eliot always has center stage; it’s no different in the hallways of Quentin’s mind.

Shamefully, he can’t get the shocked expression the miller’s apprentice was wearing out of his head. Quentin has an unnervingly crisp memory of what that _feels like_ , being guided by Eliot’s hands. 

He’s been jerking off about it for the past two weeks. Logically.

“What _did_ you mean?”

“You know exactly what I meant.” Eliot shifts into another pose. His mahogany brown linen pants hang low on his hips, revealing the dimples above the base of his spine.

Quentin scowls at him. Of all the irritating motherfuckers to be stuck with for— _oh_ —the rest of his entire goddamn life, he has to be stuck with _Eliot_. It would be easier if Eliot had fucked off to the village permanently after Quentin started dating— _courting,_ or whatever they called it here—Arielle. _Eliot_ , after all, was the one who suggested that he take Ari to the Winter Festival after she and Lunk had split.

Quentin had a crush on Arielle right away—who wouldn’t? And it seemed like Eliot had done some harmless matchmaking, urged him on. Yeah, there were a few biting quips about Quentin liking a pretty girl, but and Eliot—they weren’t entirely _exclusive_ , really. But Ari was _different_. Because she was a woman, maybe. Because she wasn’t shared between them. He should have _known_. He didn’t expect Eliot would stop fucking him. Or that his new flavor of the month, at that time, would be _Lunk_. Jesus Christ.

“No, I have no fucking clue, Eliot.” Quentin hops down from the ladder, throwing the chalk back into its basket, several pieces breaking with a satisfying clink. “I never do. I’m always the idiot. It would help if you _talked to me_. I’m—look, I’m sorry for what I said—at the market. But I’m just—what _happened_ to us? Why are you _like this_?”

He’s ready for a fight. It’s been brewing for _months_. Years, maybe.

But when he looks up, Eliot is gone. 

~~***~~

“Eliot’s gone down to the village?” Ari presses a kiss to Quentin’s cheek as he sorts through last week’s mosaic patterns, blowing the chalk dust off each one and casting a setting and waterproofing spell so that the colors don’t fade or smudge. They’ve learned that they need to keep meticulous records—one to two designs a day, all recorded with chalk. Teddy shouts and giggles when he knocks over a stack of wooden blocks, blocks that Eliot made by hand and gave him last year for his second birthday. He’s singing to himself; it’s one of Eliot’s songs. Something from _Mary Poppins_. Eliot told Teddy that Mary Poppins was a _great magician_. Eliot’s insistent that Teddy has natural talent. But you know, he’s _three_ , so Quentin thinks any thoughts on that are a little premature, _Eliot_. 

“You hear me, my sweet?”

“Um. Yeah.” He kisses Ari on the cheek, shaking himself out of his daydreaming haze. “I guess that’s where he is.” He sorts through the patterns from this week—a whale, Eliot’s version of Notre Dame, today’s island, a boot. Back when things were better between them— _how long has it been?_ —Eliot invented a challenge. They’d create distinct images from one moon to the next—no similar designs, no repeats. They’d stuck with it, even when they got like this. Now, all of their designs feel like repeats, and they keep going anyway.

“Is he seeing the butcher?”

Quentin presses his teeth together and takes in a sharp breath. The butcher? It’s been two fucking weeks since the last boy.“He didn’t say.”

Ari carries on, scratching her nails into the hair at the base of his neck. It sends a pleasant shiver down the column of his spine, but his teeth are still set, his jaw clenched. 

“He saw Hendrick a few times this month—but he said Eliot stopped coming by. Maybe he’s onto the next one. You know Eliot,” Ari says, laughing. “Seasonal lovers.”

“God,” Quentin huffs. “Yeah. It’s more like _weekly_ right now.”

“He’s sewing his blackberry patch.”

Quentin frowns. He guesses that’s the Fillorian equivalent of _wild oats_. “Gross.”

“That’s who he is. That’s what he told me when I first moved in. I think I’d asked him what his intentions were with you.”

Something drops in the pit of his chest. “Yeah, you told me that.”

“You think he’ll be home by nightfall?” Ari starts tidying up their table, putting away Quentin’s chalk in the little case Eliot made him just before Ari got pregnant.

“He didn’t say. He just—walked off.” Quentin cracks his knuckles and looks up at the trees—the leaves are starting to change now, the green of the poplars giving way to yellow.

“I’m headed out at dawn tomorrow, love. Taking Violet down to the village with Teddy and heading out from there. So—you think he’ll be back?”

“I dunno. I know you don’t like it when he’s not here to say goodbye to Teddy. He, um. He probably forgot.” He rubs one eye with the back of his hand, a sinking feeling sitting low in his bones. “Uh. How long will you be with your family this time? You decided?”

She pushes her fingers through his hair, resting her chin on his shoulder for a moment. “Four nights. You know my mother starts to drive me insane after that.”

Quentin gives her a small, tired smile as he stacks the papers and puts them into their makeshift filing cabinet—a linden wood box Quentin made their first year here, back when it was the two of them. Eliot had sewn a lining from an emerald green velour. When Quentin saw it at Market, he told Eliot the fabric reminded him of Eliot’s eyes, and Eliot, pleased, added it to their market bag. Eliot had nearly bent him in half when they’d gotten home, had fucked him for so long that Quentin’s legs were numb and Eliot had to massage them out afterwards. 

They’d need a second box soon. Most likely, Quentin would make it alone.

“I’ll miss you and Teddy,” he says. It’s true. It’s bleak without them here. By degrees, he’s realized he and Eliot aren’t even friends.

“You’ll get a lot done,” she offers. “Two designs a day.” She wiggles her eyebrow like this is something Quentin might look forward to, when, in fact, it’s the same joyless shit every day.

“Yeah. We’ll make some progress,” he says absently. It’s not true, though, is it? They never make progress. He thought in those first couple of years that they’d find the answer, get the key, go home. They’d happen on it through tenacity, perseverance, logic. He never said it out loud, but the mission started to matter less once he kissed Eliot and lay with him beneath the stars. It was clear they were stuck, and Quentin was _happy_ for once, maybe for the first time. And when Arielle happened—when Eliot gave his blessing, such as it was, for him to sleep with Ari—well, he stopped thinking they _would_ go home. He’d never leave Teddy. If they got the key, Eliot could take it back by himself. 

“Eliot said he’s going to work on finishing the addition with Holland-Leif’s Expansion Charms. So he can sleep inside when he wants.”

“We’ll—yeah. That makes sense,” Quentin says. “We’ll have to adjust the Circumstances, but—Eliot knows how to do all that stuff. It’ll take a while.” Eliot won’t want his help even if it’ll go faster with cooperative magic.

“He said he can replenish the spells on the daybed in the meantime—if he wants to bring someone home. Not perfect for the dead of winter, but fine for the autumn and spring.”

Quentin’s gut twists. “He said that?” He scratches at his chin. “He wants to bring someone back?” He thinks of the miller’s apprentice. The smith’s apprentice. The butcher.

“Mm hm,” she says absently, still playing with his hair. 

“He’s—he’s never brought anyone here before.” 

“He said he might. When I mentioned it.”

“You _mentioned_ it?”

Arielle’s cool fingers drop away from his neck. “Why? Was I not supposed to mention it? We’re grown people, Quentin. He may wish to take a husband someday soon. Even if he’s still sewing his—”

“Blackberry patch, yeah. I got it,” Quentin says. “He’s never wanted that. You even—you said he said—that’s who he is.”

“Have you _asked_ him? Doesn’t seem like the two of you talk much. Not the way you used to. He said he _might_ someday. If he meets the right person.”

“He _said that_?” 

“The repeater beaver got your tongue?”

“The _what?_ ” 

“The repeater beaver. You know. Because you can’t stop saying ‘he _said that_?’ about your former lover.” Ari’s voice isn’t entirely without frustration, but she’s herself still—cool, collected, carefully assessing Quentin and _reading_ him like she reads Fillorian alphabet books to Teddy.

“My former _what_?” Quentin scratches at his throat. It feels like it’s full of cotton.

“Your lover,” she says. 

“You know that was _brief_. Like. Here and there. Not—all the time.” Nearly every day for nineteen moons. Sometimes more than once a day. Ari doesn’t know the extent of it, but she _doesn’t need to_. Eliot assured him that he wouldn’t tell her when she asked. She wouldn’t have cared, then. 

“Mm.” She pats his hand and lets the subject drop, like she always does. “I’m going to get dinner ready. I’ll leave some out for Eliot in case he gets back before dark.”

“Oh. It’ll probably be tomorrow morning.” An image of the butcher flashes through his mind—tall and trim, muscled, all cheekbones and jaw. 

Ari looks at him like she’s puzzling something out; Quentin busies himself with the designs. “He never stays away longer than a week, does he?”

“Loyal to the quest,” Quentin says. He puts the chalk basket on top of the designs and closes the linden wood box.

“He is, dear heart.” She kisses him on the cheek again, and he draws her in by the waist. He presses his nose against her cheek and runs his fingers over the length of her hair. Her skin smells of apples and campfire smoke, the scent of _home_. Quentin lazily sneaks his hand beneath the hem of her shirt and runs his fingers over the downy sweet skin at the base of her spine, resting his hand at the curve of her hip. “You think that’s all?”

“Hm?” He pulls Ari in closer, eyes closed, listening to the wind as it passes through the trees above them. A cold snap is coming; he can feel it in the way the air moves.

“Never mind,” she said, shaking her head before she pulls away. “I’ve got sweet dough rising inside—and I’m fixing the autumn squash stew you like.”

“Good,” Quentin says blankly, his thumb making circles over the knobs of Arielle’s spine.

“Enough for four,” Ari says before she bends to pick Teddy up.

“Oh,” Quentin says, watching her hips sway as she walks inside. 

He puts their precious stack of blank paper away, along with the chalk. He recalls Eliot saying that he wished there was a _fucking Staples_ so they didn’t have to travel and barter for paper in the village near Whitespire. Eliot always contended that he hated those trips, but Quentin knew he was all talk. When they were away, there weren’t designs or chores or obligations. On the road, they had time to get lost in one another. Eliot would fuck him for hours under the open sky, separated from the world with the thin veil of Edelson’s Obscuring Enchantment, the same spell he used on the tent at Harvest Market.

It’s Quentin’s day on the ground tomorrow, so Eliot doesn’t even need to be around. He can record the pattern before they start their design for the following day. And if he’s gone for longer than that, that’s _fine_.

He lies awake for a long time after Ari and Teddy fall asleep, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the tiles, placing the colored squares, one by one, into the shape of a dragonfly. He wonders if Eliot will even know what it is.

~~***~~

“Love you, dear one.” Arielle presses a kiss to his forehead, a caress against his cheek. He doesn’t deserve it.

He’s been drifting in and out of sleep since Ari woke, opening an eye each time he hears a stray sound, checking to see if Eliot’s home. A thrum of guilt sings in him, a low beat, background noise to the intimate presence of Arielle packing clothes and wineskins, Teddy playing with pans and a spoon by the stove. He feels this sometimes when he’s on the edge of sleep—even when he’s holding Arielle, grateful for the life he’s built in his beloved fantasy world. Quentin doesn’t dwell on it, nor does he put a name to it, but he knows it has to do with Eliot, this feeling of unease. Nearly four years sleeping without him. Not that he’s counting.

The cottage is quiet after Ari and Teddy leave. It’s a heavy quiet, the kind that demands attention. Quentin fills the silence with work, the duties of a man living in a primitive era. There’s dough to be made for dinner—even if it’s only Quentin, he needs to eat. He sweeps the floor and weeds their autumn garden, collects enough squash to fry with the thick brown bread that he makes. There will be enough left for tomorrow, he thinks, if Eliot doesn’t come home tonight. 

Quentin can’t sing, not really. He can carry a tune, but his voice goes off key quickly, cracking in strange places, and he has none of the low verve that comes through when Eliot sings to Teddy, none of the confidence and grace Arielle possesses when she belts out Fillorian drinking songs. But when he’s alone like this, he sings sometimes. 

He stokes the fire to dry out some of the medicinal herbs they’ve collected, humming to himself, singing bits of remembered songs. The Decemberists, Ben Folds, Taylor Swift: the soundtrack of his life the summer before his acceptance to Brakebills, when he’d been in love with Julia and half in love with James. When his life had seemed so bleak and painful. Childish concerns, he thinks now, even though that’s not very generous to his former self. It’s just that he never would have imagined this place, this family, the nature of his adult regrets. 

“ _The drought was the very worst_ ,” he sings experimentally, “ _when the flowers that we’d grown together died of thirst. It was months and months of back and forth—and you’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore._ ”

Penny hated him for even _thinking_ those songs when he got to Brakebills, when he was missing Julia and falling for Alice and aching, even then, for Eliot. Sometimes he wishes he still had Penny—his not-quite friend getting on his case, ragging on him for his ‘whole bullshit _1989_ fetish.’

“ _Rain came pouring down when I was drowning... that’s when I could finally breathe. And by morning—gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean_.”

He brushes the ash from his hands on the green linen trousers that Eliot, of course, made for him. He sighs, kneeling by the mosaic and sorting tiles by color after their haphazard stacking yesterday evening. After it was apparent that Eliot wasn’t coming home. 

“ _Ten months sober—I must admit—just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it. Ten months older—I won’t give in. Now that I’m clean, I’m never gonna risk it_ —”

He hangs today’s design at the base of the ladder. If Eliot stayed the night in town, sticking his dick in— _whomever_ —then Quentin will need to put this together on his own. That’s _fine_. Eliot doesn’t usually leave him hanging like this, but he’s been different lately. 

He knows he sounds terrible. But he’s alone, and he’s allowed a little wallowing, accompanied by the creaky sound of his own voice. 

“ _Rain came pouring down when I was drowning—that’s when I could finally breathe. And by morning, gone was any trace of you—I think I am finally clean_.”

There’s a crunch in the dirt behind Quentin, to his right, the direction of the river. A shadow falls across the line of orange tiles he’s sorting from the brick red.

“You’re singing.” Eliot’s voice is flat. The skin beneath his eyes looks bruised.

“Not anymore. How long were you there?”

“Not long.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s Ari?”

“Her parents’ place. Took off a few hours ago. I thought she told you.”

“I forgot.”

“Well.” Quentin stacks a few of the forest green tiles next to the sea blue. “I can take over if you want to go back to the village or wherever.”

“What makes you think I’d want to do that?”

“Ari said you’ve been—” He starts putting out the tiles at the base of his dragonfly design—twenty forest green, twenty sea blue. “You know what? Never mind.”

“What?”

Quentin sighs, reaches for the vermilion stack—the foundation of the wings. He doesn’t answer.

“Seriously, I’m _so fucking curious_. What did Ari say about what I’ve been doing?”

Quentin drops a vermilion tile into place from a bit too high. It clanks angrily against a square of blue. When he looks up, he has to shield his eyes from the sun. Eliot is wearing the same brown linen trousers and a cream wrap shirt that makes his shoulders look obscenely broad. “She said you’d been seeing Hendrick. So she thought that’s where you might be. If you’re finished with whichever apprentice you were fucking before that.”

“Oh.”

Quentin doesn’t pursue it. He makes the outline of the dragonfly, slamming the tiles down. Eliot can do what Eliot fucking wants. He can traipse off in the middle of the afternoon, go fuck the butcher, pass out in Hendrick’s hovel—or shack or wattle-and-daub condo or whatever the fuck you call a Fillorian butcher’s place of fucking residence—wake up and get his dick wet again, show up back here just in time to interrupt the few minutes of silence that Quentin gets from his hamster wheel of a brain that always focuses right back on _Eliot_ as soon as he’s within a quarter-mile radius. His presence calls to Quentin, a malevolent lighthouse, a beacon of self-destructive desire.

“Did you have a question for me, Quentin?”

“No, I don’t. What I have is a _design_ I want to finish before I do the laundry and mending. If you can get on the ladder and fucking help—” He reaches for one of the cream tiles, nudging it slightly, and the stack tumbles to the ground. Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Quentin can’t do anything _right_. “—that would be _fantastic_.”

“Fine.”

There’s a clattering—movement of the ladder, the rustle of paper and chalk, the tap of Eliot’s sandals against the rungs.

“Cream between the green and red,” Eliot says. “Three up, two to each side.”

Quentin stacks the cream tiles and goes about the tedious work of placing them where they belong.

~~***~~

After a silent dinner of brown bread and fried squash, Quentin opens a bottle of blackberry wine, falling into one of the chairs by their fire pit. They used to save wine for special occasions, but this year, Quentin’s birthday has come and gone without fanfare, and Eliot refuses to celebrate since hitting thirty. They have a case of the stuff, and it’s going to turn to vinegar before anyone has an actual ‘occasion.’ Eliot has somehow gotten wrapped up in that lifestyle, too—parenthood, seriousness, sobriety. It irks Quentin that he can’t get annoyed at Eliot for not taking the quest seriously. It’s the only thing that binds them together anymore, isn’t it? Quentin pours himself a cup, kicking his feet up on the stump by the fire.

“What are you doing?” Eliot huffs out an annoying little laugh. He’s whittling at something, _judgmentally_. In the firelight, Eliot’s eyes are huge and dark and haunted.

“Drinking. Remember drinking?”

Eliot makes a frustrated sound. “Yes. I don’t know that I should.”

“I didn’t offer you any.”

“No, I don’t suppose you did.” Eliot goes back to his whittling, losing himself in the detailing work.

It’s probably a toy or instrument for Teddy—he’s always doing that. Quentin doesn’t know _why_ Teddy is such a part of Eliot’s life, why Eliot welcomed him in when he’s made it abundantly clear he didn’t want a child. Perhaps Teddy is a low-stakes interest. They aren’t blood-related; Eliot didn’t father him. When he thinks this way, he reminds himself of all the times when Eliot stayed up with a feverish Teddy so that he and Ari could sleep, the number of diapers he’d changed and washed and hung to dry, the songs and games that Teddy knows because of Eliot. The way Eliot is Teddy’s favorite. 

He hates himself a little for feeling any cynicism about Eliot’s love for Teddy, which is pure, beyond reproach. But Quentin is Quentin; he’s always been a piece of shit.

Quentin does a quick tut that lifts the cork away, and he pours himself a cup. It would be more peaceful, maybe, to drink this wine somewhere else, somewhere without Eliot’s eyes on him. But the fire belongs to both of them—it’s their place where they spend their evenings after Teddy goes to bed. It’s just that Ari isn’t here; that’s the only difference. After Quentin finishes half his cup, Eliot gets up and goes into the cottage. When he returns, shadows fall across his face in the glow of the fire, and he’s holding his own bottle of wine.

“Cheers,” Eliot says. He holds his hand over the cork, exploding it and twirling the pieces in the air, moving them and scattering them over the fire.

Quentin rolls his eyes.

They drink in silence, Quentin refilling the wooden cup after the first is finished. Eliot has apparently decided to drink straight from the bottle, staring into space somewhere above Quentin’s head.

“I didn’t go into town,” Eliot says.

“Huh?”

“You seemed so _concerned_ earlier. I thought I’d let you know.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t go around wondering where you are whenever you’re gone.” Quentin taps his fingers against the cup. It’s nearly empty, so he tops it off. “Or _who_ you’re with.”

“I wasn’t with anyone. I _rarely_ am.”

That’s a lie. He overheard the barkeep at the tavern talking about how skilled he was with his hands and— _honestly_ , Fillorians were inappropriate on, like, the best day. No one needed to be talking about that shit in public. And Quentin couldn’t un-hear it. Or get the image out of his head. “Oh yeah? What about the butcher?”

Eliot’s Adam’s apple bobs; an old tremor of longing echoes through Quentin, the back of his neck prickling. “What about him?” Eliot takes another pull of wine; half of it is already gone. “He was a decent lay. He worshiped my cock. He’s boring as fuck. That’s the entire story.”

Quentin winces and looks away. The blackberry wine is almost too sweet. The roof of his mouth tingles.

“Yeah? You don’t like that? You know—you _know_ —your petulant bullshit is fucking _intolerable_.” 

“No, I don’t like it. You and your—your— _sexual conquests_ all over the fucking village. It’s— _tacky_ ,” Quentin says, low, his throat aching. His head swims. When was the last time he and Eliot had talked? When Ari went to her parents two months ago, Eliot disappeared for four days. When he returned, he was moody and sullen, avoiding Quentin as much as possible, insisting he needed to go to bed early so _could you please go inside, Quentin_? Eliot was gone the entire week when Ari was away before that. And prior to that—the year Teddy was born—Quentin has a blank space where his Eliot-memories should have resided. It happened slowly. Eliot started pulling away after Quentin first slept with Ari. When she got pregnant and they’d married, that was the real split.

“What’s that? I don’t think I _heard you_.” Eliot takes a swig from the wine—Eliot hasn’t gotten _drunk_ , not around him, anyway, for at least a year. He has a glass of Fillorian whiskey every now and again, but he always makes a big fuss over how shitty it is. “You don’t like it when I fuck _other people_? You think it’s _tacky_? The fucking _gall_.”

 _Hard for me, Q?_ The memory of that first time at Brakebills returns to him. Breathy words, stuck in Quentin’s mind for years.

This hadn’t been a good idea. The wine was a terrible fucking idea.

He pours himself another cup. “You know what—I’m not talking about this.” Beyond the warmth of the fire, the moons are rising, casting eerie shadows over the cottage and Quentin’s dragonfly. “We should just—let’s fucking. Not talk.”

He should be able to enjoy his wine in silence if Eliot would fucking drop it. He’s been avoiding actually talking to Quentin about anything _real_ for the past seven years; they shouldn’t start on this path tonight. The fire crackles; damp wood releases pockets of steam, drying out from the heat before the fire consumes it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Eliot’s voice is deadly. He knows, even in the dark, that Eliot is watching him. 

Quentin gulps down the remainder of his wine, squeezing his eyes shut. Quentin had told Eliot he’d ruined his life the first time they fucked; he’d said, _you’d like that wouldn’t you_? He was infuriated and confused and so _young_. All Eliot wanted was a free pass before they walked into doom. Quentin wasn’t generous enough to give him that. That’s a theme with Quentin.

It was in the dark, strange rooms of his mind in the years following that he came to realize those incandescent moments beneath Eliot’s hands had been more than a wine-fueled mistake. The heat of Eliot’s mouth, the twist of his fingers, the press of his long body—these things haunted him. Then, now.

He’s always had a habit of falling in love with his friends.

He bites his lip, inspecting the wine. It’s almost empty. He’s not entirely sure when that happened. “No,” he says, only half-recalling what they were talking about. “We’re not doing this.”

“Yeah? When’s the right time?”

“Fucking literally _never_.” The wine fuzzes through his head. He has the sense that his body is disconnected from his head, fingers and toes weirdly numb from the encroaching cold and the odd, greasy feeling of being drunk after so many months abstaining.

“No—you don’t get _off the hook_. We share a life here. Tell me what your fucking problem is.”

“That’s _rich_. We don’t _share a life_.” Quentin gestures to the cottage, to Eliot where he sits in the wooden chair that he made from scratch. “We’re _adjacent_. We haven’t _shared a life_ in a long fucking time. In case you goddamn missed that.”

“Oh, well then,” Eliot says with a note of false jauntiness, “that fucking solves everything. I’m not part of your life. So you shouldn’t guilt me about who I _fuck_.”

“Christ,” Quentin spits. “You know, I. I have every right not to _like it_. That you’re out _wherever_ , disappearing when you don’t feel like working on the puzzle, when you’re getting blowjobs at the fucking butcher’s hovel—”

“He gives terrible head,” Eliot says lazily.

“—I’m done with this—the bullshit passive-aggressive whatever the fuck. The pointed comments and the whatever—mentioning the butcher, trying to be _hurtful_.” Something cracks in his throat, like an egg splitting, cold yoke clogging his airway.

And _Eliot_ —Eliot _laughs_ , a forced sound.

“ _Jesus Christ._ ” Quentin peers into the bottle and pours the last bit in his mouth. Maybe it’ll keep him from causing irreparable damage to the tenuous tie that binds them. Maybe he’s already broken it. He wishes the wine would tell him.

“Q—”

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps. 

“Come on.” Eliot’s voice drips with condescension. “You _know_ I’m not trying to be hurtful.”

“Do I know that? Hm?” He grits his teeth, thinking of the silken-hot spike of jealousy he felt at the mention of the butcher and the memory of Eliot sucking Lunk’s face a month after Eliot started pushing Quentin onto Arielle. He thinks of Lunk and the time Eliot spent in the village that winter, staying away for days, fucking that absolute _idiot._ The rage he felt, the shame. And how he can't help having the same fucking reaction to every other _onto the next one_ dumb fuck in this fucking godforsaken shithole world. “You get bored of us and you leave. You come back, and you act like an asshole.” Eliot’s face, illuminated in the firelight, is blank. “Just fucking off to wherever when you wanna put your dick somewhere.”

“Yeah, Quentin, I do leave. And I return because I’m a de facto member of this family and I have a responsibility here—”

“Yeah?” Quentin closes his eyes, the blackness behind his eyelids tinged with red. “A responsibility.” He says the word carefully, handles it like it’s a volatile thing. “That’s what we are to you.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s just fucking peachy.” He taps his foot against the ground aggressively. “You know, I’d wondered why the fuck you didn’t ƒget a place in the village so you could get blowjobs from Lunk or who-the-fuck-ever.”

“You seem to be a bit stuck on that concept, Q. Are you jealous?” Eliot’s voice goes dark and mean. “I was done with Lunk pretty quick. But now— _he_ was such an eager fuck. And so sweet and _quiet_.”

“Fuck you,” Quentin spits. “Just—fuck you, Eliot. If you fucking hate me so much, why have you stayed all this time? Why didn’t you go? Fuck around in Fillory? Find a portal back to Earth? Leave us for good?”

“You know that’s not how this quest works. You _know_ there’s no way back. You _looked_. I _can’t_ leave.”

“Well, I wish the fuck you would.” He stands, chest heaving, tight with unreasonable pain.

“Maybe I will,” Eliot says. He keeps whittling. 

Quentin stumbles away from the fire pit. He doesn’t look back; instead ambling down the path that leads to the river where they wash their clothes, where they wade with Teddy and catch freshwater crayfish. Eliot’s teaching him to swim. _Eliot._

Quentin trips over a tree root, almost falling, stubbing his toe on a rock, slicing through the cloth shoes he wears around the cottage. He shouldn’t wear them in the woods; Ari always tells him that, chides him that he’s going to hurt himself someday. He scoffs—he is, shockingly, being fucking stupid. No one would be surprised _._ Quentin is a notable idiot.

He trips again, branches whipping against his face. The night air is dipping toward freezing, a breeze picking up, leaves circling over the ground. The riverbank is slippery, and his foot catches in the muck. 

Most physical kids could float, not quite _fly_. It was more like _hovering_. The closest Quentin’s ever come was levitating during sex, and that _only_ happened with Eliot. The thing is, since most physical kids can float, they can catch themselves when they fall. Quentin, predictably, can’t. 

He collapses, the world dropping out from beneath him. And he keeps slipping—when his foot hits the next patch of mud, he can’t balance. His body tumbles like a rag doll down, down, down until he hits, full force, against the shallow edge of the shore, one leg shoved beneath the root of a tree. The water comes up to the tops of his thighs, lapping against his soaked linen pants, colder by ten degrees than the night air. When he tries to move, pain shoots through his leg, needle-sharp through his thigh, an ache spiraling down his numb-tingly calf to the flesh of his now bare foot.

He presses his cheek to the mud, a ragged sob cracking in his chest. Hot tears sting his eyes, and he’s weeping, curled in on himself like a comma, one leg stuck, unmoving. He can’t feel his lower half, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he can give into the exhaustion, dip into the quiet that lies beyond the mess in his head, find the peace he’s always wanted. He’s covered in snot and mud, face tracked with tears when he _stops_ shivering.

The cold comes on quick this time of year in Fillory. It’s warm and bright in the middle of the day, but in the dead of night, right on the cusp of autumn, the temperature drops fast. And the river is always cold. It’s cold to the point that they only swim with Teddy thirty minutes at a time, even in the summer. A sickly-pleasant warmth blooms in Quentin’s belly, and he closes his eyes. It’s better off this way. That thought pings at the corner of his mind—he tries to poke at it, to fight it. He’s been fighting it for _so long_ , that thing of not wanting _to be_ , not wanting to be a _burden_. He sinks into it, huddles in the warmth deep in his center. Through the haze of his drunkenness, he knows that this bullshit might end him. The fight he picked with Eliot—or was it Eliot who picked the fight? There’s not a clear answer when he turns it around in his mind. It’s blurred around the edges, anyway, and sleep beckons. He falls deep, drawn into the slow current of his consciousness, the water beating against him, ceaseless, inexorable. The sound of the river lulls him into frozen sleep.

~~***~~

He hears bits and pieces, feels _something,_ but his legs are like chunks of ice moving through syrup.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Q—what the _fuck_? What the _fuck_? Oh my God, _Quentin—_ ” Panic. Fingers pressing against his pulse point, a sob, low and relieved. Murmured words and an immediate warmth encasing his legs, his torso. 

“I’m—mm—” Quentin tries. His lips don’t move.

“Shh. Shh.” It’s the shushing Eliot does with Teddy when he rocks him. “You’re okay. Shh.”

More murmured words, an incantation. The tree root rises from the muck with a _slorp_ , untwisting above the still surface of the water. Quentin can hear it, can see it vaguely in the moonlight. His eyes are half open, vision clouded, muddied with dirt and cold. There’s a lifting, a falling away, liquid rolling down his body in icy rivulets. His back is bowed, one shoe lost to the mud, his ankle beginning to throb as it hits the air. Eliot has suspended him before—for _sex things_. A little hum vibrates in his core, a subconscious shuffling through memories of being held aloft like this. His eyes close.

“Baby, what did you _do_ to yourself? God.” Eliot’s voice is rough and soothing, warmth he hasn’t heard in _so long_. 

“Mm— _El_ —”

“Can’t talk, neither should you. I gotta concentrate. Stay still. I don’t know if your ankle is broken. We’re gonna—get you warm. Okay?” 

“Yeah,” he croaks. The warming charm fits around his body like a stocking. 

Quentin’s body floats up the hill, his cells waking up, his legs burning with the artificial heat of Eliot’s magic. He must pass out again because he comes to on the daybed, stripped of his clothes and spelled clean, his skin still damp and clammy, his teeth chattering, trickles of sickly cold running through his veins. Eliot stokes the fire, putting on new wood; the flames spiral upward, releasing sparks, giving off the comforting sound of wood creaking and snapping. There’s a cushioning spell around his foot, a pain-numbing spell woven in. Eliot brings Quentin a cup of water, holds it to his lips until he drinks.

Eliot hates him, wants to leave. It isn’t Eliot’s job to take care of Quentin.

But Eliot is stripping out of his own muddy-wet clothes and crawling into bed beside Quentin, facing him. Long fingers tangle in his hair, pushing the dirty mass of it away from his face. A low, whimpering sound sits in his throat, trickling out.

“Hush,” Eliot says. “Let’s get you warm.” Eliot casts another warming charm, this one not as powerful as the first. He pulls the patchwork quilt over them, tucking it around Quentin, close enough to warm him with his body.

Quentin can blame it on the wine and the whole _unconsciousness_ thing. He tucks his head beneath Eliot’s chin. Eliot goes very still, his hand resting stiff on Quentin’s shoulder. Quentin makes a sleepy, muffled noise and curls his fingers in Eliot’s chest hair, burying his nose next to his hand. Eliot smells good here—sweaty and musky and masculine, like fire and earth and the clean, sweet air of Fillory. Quentin’s dick couldn’t get hard right now if he had three boys massaging his ass and two pairs of tits in his face, but his lizard brain sends a mild twitch through his vagus nerve, and he shivers, sighing and curving into Eliot.

A rumble rises in Eliot’s throat, vibrating against the top of Quentin’s head. His hand flexes against Quentin’s shoulder, and he seems to come to a decision. Maybe he thinks Quentin is asleep. Or maybe he’s exhausted from, like, saving Quentin’s life and doing a shit ton of spells that would drain any magician’s reserves. He doesn’t think it has much to do with _his own actual self_ because he knows Eliot doesn't want him; he knows the thing he wants most in the world is _over_. But Eliot relaxes and puts his hand at the divot of Quentin’s hip, hitching him closer until Eliot’s foot is between his legs, their knees touching. They drift to sleep like that, and Quentin is well aware that it’ll all be over by morning. For now, though, he can take this small comfort, uphill and away from the cold beat of the river and the whirlwind of his mind. For now, he has Eliot, and he holds onto him like a ship is sinking below him.

~~***~~

When Quentin awakes, the thing his mind hones in on is the sensation of being surrounded. The smell of Eliot’s sweat, one arm beneath Quentin’s head like a pillow, the other slung possessively across his waist. He knows that this is only in sleep; it’s muscle memory from the years they spent in the same bed, bodies held close even before the first time they fucked. An oily knot sits in his throat, something beyond the vague hangover pounding through his body. It’s the thing that knows after Eliot wakes, he’ll pull away. He’ll put Quentin to bed inside (why hadn’t he done that last night?), and he’ll walk down to the village as soon as he’s recovered, barter a few spells for a room at the tavern and pick up some wide-eyed boy ten years his junior. 

That’s how—instead of alcohol, these days—Eliot deals with stress. Last spring, he vanished for six nights, visibly exhausted when he returned. He presses his nose again to the center of Eliot’s chest, against his curly-soft-dark hair. He wishes he could hibernate here, build a den around Eliot, burrow into him and come out when the air is warm.

Quentin makes a small grumbling noise, and Eliot shifts beneath the blankets. The warming charm has worn off, and the morning air—it must be right before dawn—is heavy and wet, the kind of cold that sinks down to the marrow, white mist settled like a cloak around them. 

“Hey,” Eliot says. “How you feeling?”

“Uh.” Quentin is very aware that he’s clinging to Eliot like a remora, his face pressed so tight that he’ll have impressions of Eliot’s chest hair on his cheeks. “Fine.”

“I should get breakfast—you’ll need something on your stomach—” Eliot’s voice is cool and clipped, and he’s already pulling away. But Quentin catches him by the elbow.

It’s a risk. There’s little between them now, little that isn’t broken. But Quentin _wants_ , wants this more than peace, more than reason. “Stay. ‘M cold.”

There’s a sigh from Eliot, a pained sound. A pause. “Okay.”

Eliot’s arms are stiff around him now that he’s awake, and Quentin is all too aware of it. He’s not drunk anymore. He has no excuse to wrap himself around Eliot. And yet. “I mean. I’m okay. I guess.” Quentin moves his head so his crown is pressed to Eliot’s chest. He can’t bring himself to pull away. “I know you hate me—and—and—I deserve it. I sh-shouldn’t—” His voice falters. “—I shouldn’t give you shit about—any of it. You can go to the tavern or wherever. I’m just—I’ll take care of myself.”

“I don’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t hate you,” Eliot says, very quiet.

“You don’t?”

“I’m not particularly—” Eliot pauses. Quentin is very aware of the wide palm resting against his hip, the low pulse of desire thrumming up through him. “I’m not fond of—I don’t like what we fought about.”

“God.” Quentin isn’t fond of it, either. But he’s not keen on taking it back. A breeze rolls through, and he shivers. He trembles and tucks his good foot between Eliot’s legs, curved into the open parenthesis of Eliot’s long body. The other foot throbs, but he doesn’t think it’s broken. “I don’t hate you, either. I guess.” He pauses, breathing Eliot in. “Thank you—for you know. Bringing me back up the hill.”

“Saving you from hypothermia?”

“Don’t be _dramatic_.”

He can feel Eliot sigh, agitated. “Q. Your pulse was light and r-rapid.” His voice falters, throat clicking when he swallows. “You weren’t responsive when I found you.” His grip on Quentin’s hipbone tightens. 

Let it be stated for the record that Quentin can’t help how his body responds to Eliot, the pulse of warmth that unspools inside, the catch in his breath, the jolt to his cock. “I’m—I was just. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t—don’t _do_ that again, okay?” Eliot’s voice is hoarse and maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing because his hand is tangled in Quentin’s hair and he’s tugging, pulling it back so they’re eye to eye, a hair’s breadth apart. 

“I—okay.”

Eliot moves his hand down, grasping the back of his neck, cupping it. “ _Promise_ me.” His eyes are like burnished copper in the pre-dawn. He’s beauty and power and magic, all the things that Quentin had loved about Fillory when he was a kid, pining for a fantasy world. “You can’t. You _can’t_ leave me here.”

“I thought you wanted to—uh. Do your own thing,” Quentin says, his voice hoarse.

“Just because I want room to—” Eliot’s voice is forced. “—do what I want within the fucking _limits_ of this world, that doesn’t mean I want to lose you. You’re my best friend.”

“‘Best friend?’ Yeah, okay,” Quentin says because Quentin is an _asshole_. “You’re— _God._ You don’t even _look at me_ unless it’s a—a preamble to saying something _cruel_.”

“ _Christ._ What do you expect from me? Not everything is going to meet your ludicrous expectations. I’m _bored_. I’m _pissed off_. You got _what you wanted_ here, and I have— _nothing_.”

“We’re nothing?” Quentin is _intensely_ aware that he’s still curled up in Eliot’s arms, _naked_ , while Eliot _once again_ blandly reminds Quentin that their life at the mosaic is a consolation prize, not the glamorous life he’d intended.

“That’s _not_ what I said.”

“It’s what you _implied_.” 

“Don’t fucking kill yourself over a stupid argument.”

“I was taking a _fucking walk_. I wasn’t doing—that’s not what I was doing.” Eliot is so close he can feel the beating of his heart.

“We both know you weren’t taking a fucking _walk_.”

The heat of Eliot’s breath against his cheek, wild curls falling over his face, eyes shining, his voice _rough_ with emotion. Quentin knows it’s a terrible fucking idea when it pops into his head, nagging at his thoughts like a toothache or an uneven sunburn across one cheek. Quentin remembers Eliot’s earthy-musky taste, the body-splitting pleasure of Eliot moving inside of him, the sounds he makes when he comes, the talent of his fingers and his tongue. These memories haunt him all too frequently, but the physical evidence is here in front of him now, Eliot’s toes pressed against his shin. “I won’t. Do it again.”

Yeah, he knows it’s a bad fucking idea with fucking ill-advised ice cream on top. He’s married. Eliot is a hazard to his emotional health, and he’s had an untold number of lovers since Quentin got married. He doesn’t give a fuck about Quentin’s feelings. But Quentin is hungover and achy, his body tight and yearning, his cock fattening up, inches away from Eliot’s thigh.

“I—just.” Quentin should apologize, but instead, he closes the space between them and presses his lips to Eliot’s, placing his hand on Eliot’s jaw and brushing his thumb across the ridge of his cheekbone. It’s a risk. It’s stupid and reckless and likely the first step toward a downward spiral. Fuck, last night was probably the first step—scratch that, he’s been stepping up to it for a fucking while. Disaster is, at this point, inevitable.

Eliot is startled, maybe, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t push Quentin off the bed. There’s a furrow in his brow. His lips are pink and wet, his cheeks wearing a slight flush. Something breaks open on his face, like light trying to peek through a boarded-up, forgotten window. “Q,” he starts. “We shouldn’t.”

Not _I don’t want you_ or _Get the fuck off of me_. Just: _We shouldn’t_.

He cups the nape of Eliot’s neck, fingers tangling in his curls. “I just—I miss you.” 

Something terribly conflicted blooms over Eliot’s face, and he rumbles, low in his throat. “This is a—” He brushes his lips featherlight against Quentin’s, sighing into his mouth. “—terrible idea. What—what are you doing? You don’t—you don’t _want_ _this_.”

Quentin chases Eliot’s mouth, kissing him harder, more insistent. He pulls the bow of Eliot’s lips between his teeth. “I want you _all the time_. Wanna feel how bad I want you?” Quentin’s voice is _rough_ , ragged. Eliot has always liked this, feeling how hard he gets, how much he _wants_. For Quentin, it never really stopped, stirring in the background, a restless eddy of attraction. 

“ _Fuck_ —” 

Quentin takes Eliot’s hand and draws it down his torso, placing those long fingers on his aching cock. A whimper, involuntary, escapes his lips. “I think—I think about it all the time.” Eliot grips him, a delicious weight, and he shivers. “When I watch you from the ladder, when you’re in the river. I jerk off—”

“Q.” Eliot’s voice is whisper-quiet, his lips drawn to Quentin’s again, his palm encircling Quentin’s cock. He hasn’t pulled away. 

“—when I’m alone. I think about you. About how it felt when you fucked me. I’ve _never_ had anything so good.” Quentin lets out a sob as Eliot rubs his thumb over the head of his dick, gathering the precome and smearing it along the underside. The thing is—Quentin knows what he’s doing. Eliot has matured; he’s not the boy Quentin met. But he’s still _vain_. He can feel it happening, can see it in the journey of emotions playing over Eliot’s face.

“Yeah? You like me inside you?”

“You know I— _ah_ —fucking _loved it._ ” Quentin’s body tightens like he’s trying to clench down as Eliot starts stroking him. “Please— _please_ —fuck me, please.”

Eliot lifts his free hand in a tut, and the quilt falls away, exposing both of them. Eliot is _hard_ , wet at the tip, just from touching Quentin. A dark look crosses Eliot’s face. “You’re so fucking _concerned_ —” He pins Quentin’s hip to the bed, rough, spitting on his hand and stroking him, messy-slick sounds in the morning air. “—with where my _dick goes_. Is that because you’ve been wanting it?”

Quentin chokes out a ragged sound, nodding. His cock is wet and hot in Eliot’s tight grip, frenetic energy building from the friction, the efficiency of Eliot’s skilled hand.

Eliot smirks, venomous. “I see you watching me. You drive me _fucking crazy_.”

And with that declaration, Eliot grabs both of Quentin’s hips, rough enough to bruise, and sucks down his cock, laving his tongue over its length and taking him down to the base. Quentin’s body bows and nearly _levitates_ by itself, so intense is the rush of pleasure that courses through him. The enveloping warmth of Eliot’s mouth, the grip of his fingers. And Eliot is summoning lube and spreading Quentin’s legs apart, groaning as he presses two fingers to Quentin’s hole. Quentin lets out a low, animal sound as Eliot takes him to the back of his throat and swallows against the head of his cock. His back arches as two fingers slide into him, unrelenting, stretching him so _open._ His thighs burn, his cock jumping as Eliot’s fingertips glance against his prostate. The drag of his fingers sets off sparks, igniting a flame forgotten in Quentin, rising in spirals, building toward inevitability.

Eliot takes his mouth away with a filthy slurp. Quentin’s cock is dripping with spit, precome leaking from the slit. Eliot sits back on his haunches, his gaze hungry, glued to Quentin’s hole, where he slides his fingers in, rubbing and circling, pressing inside. Wisps of radiant pleasure fly through him, an orgasm waiting on the edge of his consciousness. So good that something like pain winds its way alongside the unspooling bliss. “I— _I’m_ close _._ ”

Eliot’s fingers still inside of him. “Already? You stroke that pretty cock and think of me fucking you, don’t you?” Eliot pulls his fingers back, with aching slowness, adding a third when he presses back in. 

“Fuck you.”

“Tell me.”

“I do,” Quentin pants. “I think about y-your fingers inside me when I—when I jerk off—oh holy Christ—” Eliot is circling over his prostate, pressing and releasing. Quentin’s cock jerks helplessly. “—please _please_ fuck me.”

“No.” Eliot employs a brutal precision, circling and fucking and teasing, drawing Quentin close to the edge and leaving him there, writhing against his fingers. His dick is throbbing, leaking thick drops of precome beneath his navel, jerking hard with every thrust of Eliot’s fingers.

“Please—come _on_ — _please_.”

“No. You’re going to come for me how I _tell you_.” Every stroke hits him just right, his body on the edge for long minutes while Eliot wields his fingers, a skilled weapon. Quentin’s nipples are tight, his cock thrumming with need, aching hard and untouched as Eliot fucks into him, scissoring and twisting his fingers. Quentin _whimpers,_ loud and long, the sparks within him flying into a disorganized storm, directionless. Eliot chuckles, redoubling his efforts and fucking into him with _intent_. “Come on now, let me see it. Let me see it, baby.” The old pet name falling from his lips like it’s nothing.

Quentin’s hips buck up and he comes in hot ropes, spurting up to his chest. “Oh _my God_.”

“Yeah. You were good for me, huh? Guess I know the way to keep your fucking _mouth_ _closed_ , don’t I?” Eliot’s fingers slide out of him, and Quentin immediately hears Eliot summoning more lube, the slick sound of Eliot jerking himself off. Propping up on his elbows, his legs still spread, Quentin watches him work his hand over his cock, his foreskin sliding back from the blush-pink head and encasing it again in mesmerizing, rhythmic movements. Eliot grunts as he jerks himself, bringing his free hand to Quentin’s thigh, squeezing him so hard it hurts. 

Quentin can’t speak. Even in the dim mist of the morning, the air has left his lungs. In the years they were _together_ , Eliot liked to put on a show for Quentin, fucking _amused_ by how much a ‘straight boy’ liked his dick. Quentin fucking retroactively _hates him_. Fuck the sappy bullshit, the romanticized longing. Fuck him.

“You like watching me. Like my fingers in-inside you, huh?” Eliot bites his lip and lets out an animal sound, his flat abdomen tensing up. “Oh _fuck—_ ” Eliot’s body seizes, and his nails dig into Quentin’s skin as his orgasm hits, his gorgeous cock spurting hot come over Quentin’s cock, dripping down over his balls, covering his hole. 

A shiver runs through Eliot’s body, and he rolls away from Quentin, pushing off the other side of the bed. He pulls on the raw silk robe he keeps on the headboard—the one Quentin had skimped and saved and traded for five years ago, when they barely had enough food to eat—and walks toward the cottage. 

He opens the door and taps his fingers against the door frame, looking toward the bed but not quite _at_ Quentin. “You should shower,” he says before he walks inside.

~~***~~

The good news is that Quentin’s ankle isn’t broken. The bad news is that he goaded Eliot into finger fucking him this morning. The worst news is that he doesn’t even feel guilty about it. He just feels _tired_.

He doesn’t feel like starting a new pattern on the mosaic, and Eliot has, predictably, walked off with Quentin still lying in bed, covered in the evidence of their wrongdoing. Something tells him that the beauty of all life doesn’t come from cheating. Or dredging up all the remnants, the guilt and pain from a relationship that was never an actual relationship. What’s really fucked up is how much Quentin _loved_ it, Eliot taking control and using him, spreading his legs apart and covering him in come. 

He’s got a… _fine_ sex life with Arielle. He loves his wife. It’s a slow, gentle kind of love; it rests neatly between the two of them. They don’t fight; they rarely disagree. She takes care of him, and he does his best to do the same for her. Domestic bliss, the kind of relationship that makes him think back on Alice and say _what the actual fuck were you thinking_? 

But passion—that low-down, dirty _wanting_ —he’s only ever had that with Eliot. He doesn’t think about it frequently, doesn’t consider the ramifications. The nebulous, never-to-be-had-again time in his life when he was _with_ Eliot dissolved when he started sleeping with Ari. And—Arielle had gotten pregnant almost right away. They were married. It was done then. Eliot made certain Quentin knew it.

The thing with life is that you expect it all to happen like you want it, pieces falling into place in a linear, predictable pattern. But life is, Quentin has discovered, not at all fucking like that, and it gets _worse,_ more complicated with each passing year. It wasn’t like he thought he’d ever feel _neutral_ about Eliot. There would always be history between them, but he assumed the fire would die out with time, only embers remaining. But desire defies the laws of logic, the path of reason. 

If anything, his hunger for Eliot has flourished and transformed with the darker parts of his personality, eating away at the maturity he’s cultivated, a malignant symbiosis. A parasite, changing his adult trajectory by degrees, forcing Quentin to yield to its own purposes. It happened entirely without permission: Eliot latching on and taking up permanent residence in the wanting, empty part of his soul. 

After Quentin weeps for a good fifteen minutes in the outdoor shower, head buried in the crook of his elbow as the magic-heated water rains over his back, he eats a breakfast of rubbery scrambled eggs and builds a pyramid of sticks and logs in the fire pit. It’ll be cold again tonight, and he needs something to do so that his brain won’t actually start eating itself. 

He’s sorting through their supplies for winterizing the cottage—oilskin tarps for the firewood, the wool they’ve bartered for over the past year to work as extra insulation, the clay and sap they’ve mixed before to repair the roof—when he hears the telltale crunching on the path that signals Eliot’s return. Eliot’s there when he looks up, carefully avoiding Quentin’s gaze as he veers toward their cold storage house to organize whatever he bought at market. Quentin watches him, dark green trousers sitting low at his waist and hugging the curve of his unfairly perfect ass. Eliot’s curls are windswept, cheeks pink. 

Quentin wonders, an invasive thought, eating away at his ability to reason, if Eliot visited the butcher when he was in town; if he was there for more than potato-parsnips. They need to _talk_ ; Quentin knows this. But Eliot, in a move that would shock no one at all, avoids him, taking their fishing equipment down to the river after he puts away the vegetables. 

Quentin busies himself with cutting strips of oilskin and binding it with wool using a little mending spell he designed, stitching it to the sides of their door and windows with a similar spell that allows the molecules to see each other, to bind together and become parts of one whole. It’s not the broad, weighty magic that Eliot employs to expand the inside of the cottage or keep the shower water warm, not the showy telekinesis he used to bring Quentin back up the hill. But it’s precise and pragmatic, small and detailed. It’ll keep them warm through the winter, repair the roofing when the first storm hits. This is what Quentin has to offer. And today, it’s what keeps him sane. 

The sun is dropping behind the trees when Eliot returns, bearing a line full of blue river fish—their meat dark pink like salmon but lighter in texture, more like trout. It’s a good haul; Eliot has the patience for fishing, and Quentin decidedly doesn’t. Eliot catches his eye as he guts the fish on their outdoor butcher’s block and Quentin gives him a small nod. Eliot’s face is a study in reticence; he looks back down at his work, expertly deboning the fish and drawing out perfect filets. He _hates_ Eliot for his skills at hunting and fishing, sewing and carpentry, for his talent at meta-comp spells that allow them to keep their food fresh for seasons at a time, his proclivity for gardening. But, you know, he also _really doesn’t_ hate it. That’s sort of the problem right now, isn’t it? 

Quentin’s heart pounds, a snare drum in his chest, as he stands and attempts a _casual stroll_ to the butcher’s block. They’d moved it out of the kitchen two years ago to open up the space for one of Eliot’s expansion spells, and it had never gone back inside. Quentin has watched Eliot scale fish and butcher rabbits, season the block, clean it down by hand and then with magic. It’s quotidian, mundane. The scenery of home. Today, it’s different, blood rushing in his ears, his ankle sending shooting pain up his leg, his body sore and wrung out from _almost dying_ and Eliot finger fucking him. And then weeping in the shower. Yeah. It’s really been an interesting twenty-four hours. 

Eliot’s hands move lightning-quick, filleting each fish in under a minute each, even without magic. Quentin taps his fingers against the butcher’s block until he looks up. Eliot immediately flicks his eyes away. “What?”

“We need to talk,” Quentin says. 

“What about?”

“Don’t be a dick.” 

“You were pretty clear last night.” His gaze meets Quentin’s for a moment. “That’s exactly what I am.”

“Stop it. I was drunk. And—I have no right to— _look,_ I’m sorry, okay? Can we talk like, um. Like reasonable adults?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eliot says sharply. “Are you a reasonable adult? Or are you a _kid_? You’ve been acting a lot like the latter.” He debones the final fish and places the fillets on the wire grill pan Eliot made for their fire pit. Eliot fucking _makes everything_ , and Eliot _is_ a dick. But they fucked this morning, and they need to talk. It’s the responsible thing to do. The _adult_ thing. And Quentin is an adult, like ostensibly. He has a wife and a child and he barters and trades with complicated mending spells in the village, and he repairs the roof and does the weather stripping and bakes bread in the evening. He does adult things like all the fucking time, so that’s fucking—close enough, anyway.

“Don’t call me a kid,” Quentin spat. “It takes two to tango.” As soon as it’s out of his mouth, Quentin knows he sounds like an absolute dorktastic _idiot_. He could have said literally anything else, and it would be better than _that_.

Eliot smirks, not one of his _kinder_ looks. “You made your choice. I’m not _married_.” 

“Yeah? No, you’re _not_. You keep making that point very fucking clear. You—you don’t _do_ relationships. We’re a goddamn burden. I’m a piece of shit. You’d rather be literally anywhere else. I get the message.”

“That’s not what I said,” Eliot snaps. Snapping the pan closed, he walks around Quentin and arranges the pan over the fire with the grace and ease he brings to everything. When Quentin catches a glimpse of his face, Eliot’s expression is haggard, so different from his usual veneer. Quentin has him rattled. A sliver of triumph worms its way through Quentin; he’d rather not be such a petty dick, but he _definitely_ is. Might as well wear the fucking shoe if it fits.

Sighing loudly, he perches on one of Eliot’s fucking handmade chairs, resting his chin on his knees. Eliot probably expects him to go inside, but he’s feeling like aggravating Eliot again, and the fire is warm. And fuck it—the _view_ is good. Eliot in his navy wrap shirt, the emerald green jodhpurs he bought at market because they looked good on his legs. 

Quentin wishes he had a quip to hurl in Eliot’s direction—but he’s coming up short. All he wants, all he’s ever wanted, is for Eliot to love him. But he doesn’t. That’s the shape of the thing, isn’t it? Quentin qualifies for a hate fuck. And that’s that. 

He waits until the fish is done, and he silently takes his portion inside.

~~***~~

That night, it’s cold again. Quentin doesn’t stoke the fire inside because he’s bone tired—sore in ways he hasn’t been in a long time, emotionally wrung out. When he climbs into bed and closes his eyes, he imagines a towel, over-washed and threadbare, drying on the line. That’s what his insides feel like. It’s the last thing he thinks before he goes to sleep. 

The sensation of waking doesn’t hit all at once. It’s a creeping thing; his toes taking in the chill of the room, the icy water lapping over his legs, the painless desire to sink into the flicker of warmth that had come to life inside him when his heart rate slowed, when the chill of the forest threatened to claim him. Something pings under his skin, a little alarm going off that zaps him the rest of the way to waking. He’s floating, barely breathing, Eliot’s voice. Eliot’s _panic_. Strong hands clutching Quentin like he’s precious, heat enveloping him, singing through his body. The weight of it, what they did and—Eliot is falling away, leaving him by the river, telling him, authoritatively, that he’s _useless_. A heavy weight descends over him.

Clutching at his chest—he can’t _breathe_ —heart beating double time—a clawing, suffocating _grasp_ winds its way through his ribs. He’s making noise—something sharp and high pitched, crying pitifully and—he’s awake, eyes fluttering, focusing and blurring back out, his vision narrowed down to points. It’s been _years_ since he’s woken up like this. _Years_. Ari’s _never_ seen him do it. He must have been crying in his sleep because his cheeks are streaked with tears. He sits, trying to steady himself, clutching at the window sill as he shakes, _bawling_. What had he—what had he _done_? Shame, black and amorphous, throbs in the pit of his stomach. He hears himself, crying thick and ugly, scrambling from beneath his nightmare—calling for _Eliot_ before he’s even fully aware of what he’s doing. 

He spends long minutes shivering in bed, the blanket wrapped around him like a cocoon. A therapist had taught him about 4-7-8 breathing back before Brakebills—he’d used it in the years since then when he had no one to hold onto. He counts to four when he breathes in now, holds his breath for seven counts, lets go for eight and—maybe he’s calming down. He’s alone, and he was alone for years—he can be alone now. By the time he’s gone through four breathing cycles, his breath is coming slower, and he’s shivering less, even if he’s still _cold_. He should—get something—water or, heat up some tea. Go back to sleep.

The door cracks open, moonlight pouring in. “Q?”

Quentin winces at the nickname. “I’m f- _fine_ ,” he croaks, his voice jagged at the edges. A sob sits at the border of those words; he tries to wrest it away, extract it and push it beneath the bed.

Silhouetted in the doorframe, moonlight bright behind him, Eliot’s outline reminds him of something otherworldly—a dryad or a nymph. Eliot has always _fit_ in Fillory; no matter how much Quentin loves this place, he doesn’t belong here the same way that Eliot does. He’s a _king_ ; no amount of time or space has taken that away. “You’re not fine,” Eliot says, his tone on the border of irritation. Like it’s Quentin’s _fault_ that he’s not fine. Well, it sort of is. But it wasn’t his idea to have a fucking nightmare.

 _That, fuck you very much, is your fucking fault, you fucking asshole_.

“Go—uh. Go back to sleep,” Quentin says. He should go for a flop back on the bed, but his grip is still white-knuckled against the window, thumb pressed hard into the wall.

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Eliot pushes the door all the way open, steps inside, and closes it behind him. The racing, whirring sound in Quentin’s ears picks up, a broken clock, ticking haywire.

Quentin imagines himself telling Eliot take his insomnia to the village where he can fuck some boy who doesn’t know what a gigantic dickwad he is. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything. 

“You let the fire go out. It’s fucking _freezing_ in here.” His tone, again, accusatory. “You’re _hurt_ —”

“No, goddammit, I’m _fine_.” His voice comes out craggy and low.

“I can’t take my fucking eyes off you. You can’t manage to keep yourself warm without someone here to _do it for you_.” Eliot moves into _passive-aggressive_ action, clearing out the ashes from the stove and stacking sticks and logs, lighting the kindling with a snap of his fingers. The fire catches, casting a merry orange light over the room, a stark contrast to the gray shadows pooling in Quentin’s gut.

“I was _tired_.”

“Yeah? Wonder why.” Eliot dusts off his hands and pulls a spare blanket from a shelf. “Maybe it was because you almost drowned yourself last night.” 

“My face wasn’t in the water.” If he were half as gifted as Eliot, he’d attempted a telekinetic enchantment and push Eliot the fuck back out of the goddamn door. Quentin is the one who does the fucking— _menial shit_ that no one notices. Mending the grain bags, maintaining the potato house, casting anti-pest spells on their sorghum and hemp, drying and organizing the medicinal herbs. No one _gives a fuck_. He wishes Eliot had stayed away when he left this morning. Leave Quentin to his nightmares. That’s what Quentin deserves.

“Let’s not split hairs over your proclivity for self-destruction.” 

“You’re one to talk.”

“I’m not drinking anymore,” Eliot says haughtily. The firelight plays over his features; he’s broad and strong, long and lithe and delicate in his silk robe. The vague outline of his soft cock shifts beneath the light material. It’s _there_. It’s _huge_. And Quentin can’t help _looking_. 

“No, you’re sticking your dick in half the village instead,” Quentin says. “A—a fucking _healthy_ coping mechanism. No one gets hurt—right? Just all the boys you fuck and _leave behind_.”

Eliot closes the space between them, throwing the blanket on the bed at Quentin’s feet. Swift and fluid, he shoves Quentin onto his back, the whole of Eliot’s upper body looming over him. “You’re the one who got _fucking married_.”

“Fuck. You,” Quentin spits, barely an inch from Eliot’s face.

For the heartrending span of several seconds, he thinks that Eliot might fucking— _slap him_ or something. He braces himself, his breath coming fast; fuck knows he earned it. Quentin’s a fucking cheat. A liar. A contemptible, worthless fuck. All over _Eliot_. Again. 

And then it’s _happening_ before Quentin’s brain can process it. Eliot’s knees are between his, and Eliot’s kissing him with crushing force, stubble scratching against his cheeks as Eliot attacks his face, fucking his tongue into Quentin’s mouth, grabbing his shoulders and sliding down over his body so that he can feel Eliot growing hard through the diaphanous fabric as he thrusts absently, instinctively, directly against Quentin’s dick. His robe falls open, exposing one pale shoulder, luminous in the play between fire and moonlight. Eliot chuckles as he leans back and grabs the base of his cock, the tie of his robe coming loose. A pitiful whine escapes Quentin’s throat.

Four years ago, when Eliot ended things, Quentin banked on his desire for Eliot subsiding. Maybe it’s because he sees Eliot every day, but he can’t, hasn’t been able to get _this_ out of his head. And here’s the loathsome result, boiling like hot black tar in his gut—he’s at Eliot’s mercy, foolish and weak, undeserving of this life. 

“This is what you want.” He strokes himself, languid, laughing. Eliot bites his lower lip and grunts, the brushing of his palm against his cock awakening a sense memory in Quentin, hidden in his mind for four years. A night like this when Eliot had him spread open, played with him for hours, the crackle of the stove fire in the background. “Isn’t it?”

Quentin scowls, propping himself up on his elbows. He’s _naked_ , so he can’t exactly hide the fact that he’s gone _humiliatingly_ hard, cock straining so it’s nearly touching his stomach, his legs spread wide. On _display_. For Eliot. There’s no pretending here. “Yes.”

“You begged me to fuck you, didn’t you?”

Quentin doesn’t say anything; he just watches Eliot stroke his cock, the hypnotic stretch of skin over his tip. Yeah, he begged for it. He’d fantasized and _yearned_ and revisited all the memories of Eliot holding him down and sliding inside of him, one hand curled around his neck, the other at his hip as he filled him, covered him, made him feel small and loved and _whole_. The flickering images of riding his cock, lazy, in the moonlight, on top of the patchwork quilt on the daybed or on the mosaic, the stars and trees above them, the moons casting their opalescent light over their bodies.

“Turn over,” Eliot says. His tone bears that _authority_ that Quentin has never fully understood. Quentin’s body reacts.

His mouth goes dry. He should tell Eliot to fuck off, that they _can’t_ do this, they need to _stop_ before this gets out of hand. Instead, he rolls over, whimpering when Eliot hitches him up on his knees. Eliot ghosts his lips along the length of Quentin’s spine, over the line of his shoulder, broad hand sweeping Quentin’s hair to the side so Eliot can get a hand on his neck. “You missed this, didn’t you?”

Quentin nods helplessly. His Adam’s apple bobs over the flesh of Eliot’s fingers.

“Tell me. Tell me you thought about me.”

“I _told you_ ,” Quentin says, “this morning.”

“Yeah? You did.” Eliot’s hand slips between his legs, and he groans, low, when he grips Quentin’s cock. “I want you to tell me again.”

Quentin _trembles_ as Eliot starts stroking him—he remembers exactly what Quentin needs. Rough handling followed by lighter touch, a tugging that ignites the low flame of want inside. “Yeah, I—” Eliot cups his balls, puts his thumb _right_ against Quentin’s hole. “—oh _fuck_. I’ve—I never _stopped_ thinking about you. I _always_ wanted you. I _never fucking stopped._ I’m fucked up, okay?”

There’s no response beyond the press of Eliot’s fingers pulling him apart, like Eliot is _inspecting_ him. And then—Eliot’s hand is gone from his neck, and Quentin feels the sigil when Eliot traces it over his lower back, hears the low murmured words and the subsequent _jumping_ feeling low in his abdomen, tingling coolness descending. In a fucked up Pavlovian response, Quentin’s nipples harden; his cock jerks. 

He knows Eliot’s playbook—this is half a prep spell. He’s well aware of what’s coming next: Eliot’s heated breath against his hole, the exploratory touch of that singularly skilled tongue, Eliot’s filthy moaning as he licks at Quentin, soft at first, barely pressing in—brief, almost tentative touches. The slick-dirty sounds, the rough, steadying touch of Eliot’s thumbs, fingers digging into his hips—Quentin hangs his head and lets out a throaty, animal sound, toes curling, his balls drawn up tight against his body. He pushes his hips back, shameless, his awareness whiting out to a single point—Eliot’s tongue pushing inside, the pained heaviness of his cock as Eliot _opens_ him, as he bears down in _want_ , in anticipation. When Quentin gets too greedy, legs shaking, too _loud_ , Eliot backs off, laughing— _infuriating_ —and grabbing a whole handful of his ass.

“Behave yourself, baby. Make it last for me. You want me, so you better give me what I want,” Eliot says, his voice thick. He circles a finger over Quentin’s sensitive rim before he dives back in and licks at him again, groaning against his hole as _keeps on_ , thorough and deep, fucking into him, tongue moving further inside. Quentin thinks he could come from just this. Fuck, Eliot had made him do it before, after _hours_ of edging him, bringing him close and pulling back with nothing but his tongue and the slightest touch of his fingers.

He hates himself. For wanting this. For _knowing_ that the best sex he’s ever had has been with Eliot. That he’s _actively_ choosing to sabotage his marriage, his life, his own sanity. That he loves someone—has loved him for the better part of a decade—who doesn’t love him. Eliot wants him, yeah—sure, if the past day is any indication. But Eliot wants a lot of people, can have _any_ of them. Quentin thinks he might have even fucked a couple of women in the village, just to change things up, to get _further_ away from the needy cling of Quentin’s emotions and Quentin’s family and Quentin’s perennially fucked up brain and his habitually terrible choices. 

This is only Eliot _wanting_ , flashing like a solar flare, a barely detectable event in the meandering life of the galaxy. Quentin is the one who’ll be left with a permanent mark, a charred, burning wound along the tentatively woven threads of his psyche. It’ll rip apart sooner or later—it always does—and his family will have to deal with the pieces of his selfishness when it finally, perhaps irrevocably this time, falls the fuck apart. Eliot can easily escape to the village, to another man’s arms, but Quentin will never be able to escape himself. And yet—there’s no escape from this, either.

Eliot pulls back, and Quentin keens, almost crying. “El,” he chokes out. “ _Please_. Don’t go away.” He’s _pathetic._ If he’s done all this, if he’s started down this path, he _needs_ what Eliot’s mouth and hands have promised him. 

“I’ve got you,” he says, low, pressing his thumbs into the muscles of Quentin’s hips. 

“Please, I need you—”

“You’re so greedy. But it’s been a while.” Eliot’s voice has an odd, almost sickening lilt to it. Like his anger has been distilled into its parts and dispersed; he’s trying to hold onto the pieces but finds himself failing. He presses the tip of his finger against Quentin’s spit-wet hole again, pressinginside to the first knuckle. “It’s going to be—” Eliot shudders, letting out a choked-off sound. “—be a _tight fit_.”

Quentin makes a noise like he’s being strangled; his body is wrung out, _empty_. He _needs._

The slow touch of Eliot’s finger right above his hole, another whispered charm; the slow warmth of the opening spell takes him over, and his body trembles, cock leaking as the pressure expands and releases inside. “Oh my _God_ — _fuck_.”

This was—Eliot _didn’t_ do this spell, not unless he was losing his _mind_. Eliot always spent as long as he needed, working him open on his fingers until he was a mess of lube and loosened muscles, trembling against Eliot’s hand. In the half light, Quentin looks back at Eliot, sees one hand working over his cock, the other gripping Quentin’s ass, thumb holding him open. 

“Need you, too,” Eliot murmurs, an errant curl falling over one eye. The blunt head of Eliot’s cock pushes against him, insistent, until it enters him with a slick, muffled pop. Eliot’s hands pet over his sides, down the backs of his thighs, back up to his hips. Breath hitching, he slides inside, glittering fire sparking through the cradle of Quentin’s hips, up the column of his spine, gooseflesh across the expanse of his skin. 

Quentin can’t hold back the sound that starts low in his chest, erupting needy and awed as Eliot moves inside him, rocks against him with shallow little thrusts that leave Quentin unsatisfied, wanting more, begging for it with the heat and motion and sweat of his body. His shoulders fall over Quentin’s, wider and taller and fuller than he is, tongue and teeth on the meat of Quentin’s back, hands roaming over his skin like he can’t bear _not_ to touch him. 

“How’s it feel, baby?” Eliot punctuates his question with a pointed thrust, gasping as he crams himself inside, pulls back and thrusts in again. “Is this what you wanted? Hm? What you’ve been thinking about?”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, sobbing. He feels it in his thighs, the burn and stretch, the _fullness_ no one else has ever given him, the toe-curling, life-changing deep fucking. Tears streak down his cheeks, cock iron-hard and leaking, as Eliot falls into a punishing rhythm. Pleasure, glowing too-bright, twists inside of him, pulling so tight that he thinks he might _break._ One long arm snakes around Quentin’s chest, Eliot holding him upright; he presses his fingers against Quentin’s lips, holding still inside him until Quentin opens his mouth and, closing his eyes, sucks on Eliot’s fingers. 

“Good—you’re good,” Eliot whispers, falling back into fucking him in hard, even strokes. “All those boys in the village—” _Why_ does that make Quentin _instantly_ hotter? What the _fuck_ is wrong with him? “—I was just trying to find—” Eliot nips at his ear, grunting as he changes his angle, driving into Quentin and gliding over his prostate with each movement. “—someone who felt like you. Fuck, I’ve been with—” Eliot fucks his fingers into Quentin’s mouth, petting over his tongue, Quentin’s drool falling over his hand as Eliot _laughs_. “—so many pretty boys and _none_ of them fucks like you.” 

Tears fall to his pillow, cooling on his cheeks. “El, Eliot—” he croaks.

“Yeah, baby?” Eliot’s voice is faint, and he slows, his hand light against the skin covering his ribs. 

“I wanna see you,” he chokes, the words burning in his throat, like he’s trying to force them out through the haze of a dream. That’s what Eliot had always been like—a big, beautiful dream. Quentin whines when Eliot pulls out and flips him onto his back, propping his hips up with a pillow before pushing back inside with a shocked, low noise.

“Is that better? That what you wanted?” Eliot noses at his cheek, hips still working rhythmically, no less forceful, but he’s _closer_ to Quentin now. Quentin can _see_ him, the damp hair falling over his forehead, the cleft of his chin, the curve of his cheekbone, the outline of his arms and the muscles of his chest.

Quentin nods, still crying, entwining his arms around Eliot, Eliot’s abdomen brushing against his cock with each thrust. “Kiss me,” he mumbles. “Please.” 

Eliot makes a hollow, punched-out sound and covers Quentin’s mouth with his, sucking at his bottom lip and his tongue, their teeth clacking as Eliot thrusts into him. It’s sloppy and filthy, _wicked_ , leaving Quentin wanting more, adding to the pit of curling lust and fullness that thrums, low in his hips. “You needed me,” Eliot said. He ducks his head and licks Quentin’s neck, tasting his sweat. 

“ _Harder_ ,” Quentin says, digging his heels into the backs of Eliot’s thighs. “Fuck—you got me— _so close_ —” 

Eliot grunts and bites down against Quentin’s collarbone, thrusting into him, ruthless and precise, hitting him just _right_ with each movement, building the solid, glowing desire inside until it _peaks_ and Quentin _comes_ , fingers and toes clutching at air, tingling down to his marrow, through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, glowing bright, on and on, as Eliot laughs mildly, and fists Quentin’s hair as he drives into him harder. 

“So _good_ , God, you—feel _so fucking good_.” Eliot’s body seizes and jumps as his hips stutter, cock pulsing hot inside; he’s gasping, fingers digging into Quentin’s scalp, his muscles quivering, pressing kisses over his jawline, beneath his bottom lip, over the stubble on his chin. Quentin swears he can feel it, Eliot’s come warm and viscous, filling him—but maybe it’s the aftershocks of the orgasm still running through his core, the blood-hot pulsing, spine-melting bliss that only Eliot has ever brought him. 

He braces for it—for Eliot to leave, to tell him to get cleaned up. The grand exit, his swanning out of the cottage, silencing wards around the daybed. He scrunches his eyes shut—maybe if he doesn’t see it happen, it’ll be easier. Instead, Eliot rolls Quentin onto his side, holding him close with one arm while he lazily tuts a cleaning spell, his lips pressed to Quentin’s forehead. 

Quentin wants to tell Eliot—well, a lot of things. That he _loves him_ , that he’s been in love with him for—he doesn’t know how long. There’s no way to say _when_ he’d fallen in love; the series of moments are at once exact and immeasurable. It’s been the bulk of his adult life, a crisp slice of his most meaningful years. Considering he still feels that his life _began_ when he walked out of the bushes and into the bright sunlit world of Brakebills, he maybe fell a little bit in love with Eliot as soon as he saw him. Eliot is synonymous with magic itself—his first friend at Brakebills, the High King of Fillory, the one who held him in the first, terrifying nights at the mosaic. 

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says, very small. 

Eliot pets over his back in soothing circles and tucks him beneath his chin. “What for?”

“I said we didn’t share a life.”

Eliot is quiet; his hand stills. 

“We _do_ ,” Quentin says. “Share a life.”

“Oh.” Eliot pauses and starts tracing circles over Quentin’s shoulder. “I think we ought to save this line of discussion for the morning.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says blankly. He burrows into Eliot; he loves the smell of him, bitter and musky in the absence of deodorant, faint lavender undertones from their lye soap. He’s sapped out and flattened. There’s nothing else to say, is there? No one phrase that’ll make it okay.

Quentin sleeps a lot better than he should.

~~***~~

Predictably, they don’t talk in the morning. Quentin wakes up in a tangle of long limbs, a tongue, insistent in his mouth, and a hard cock pressed to his thigh. Quentin gives himself over to it, refuses to think, loses all trace of coherence in Eliot’s touch. When Eliot pushes him onto his back, performs the prep spell on himself and sinks down on his dick, Quentin takes Eliot’s hand and loops their fingers together, his head thrown back in pleasure—and he doesn’t say much of anything at all.

They both know they have two more nights, and nothing is spoken. The puzzle sits untouched while they work on weatherproofing the cottage for the coming snows. Quentin helps with spellwork to adapt Eliot’s old room for Teddy, adding an expansion spell to create a wholly new room for Eliot. Last winter, he’d slept in and out of the cottage, spending nights in the village with his paramour of the season. 

Quentin holds the things Eliot told him, delicate, like breakable gifts, in his mind, turning them over and examining them when they stop for lunch or when he catches Eliot watching him. That he’d thought about Quentin, wanted him still, that he’d _searched_ for him, even after all this time.

There’s a moment after dinner, when Eliot builds up the fire outside and casts the warming spell over the daybed, that Quentin thinks Eliot might tell him to go back inside. But Eliot pulls him to bed, stripping him out of his clothes, putting his lips to odd places—the side of Quentin’s nose, the tip of his chin, the hairless spot next to his armpit, the backs of his hands, the furred skin beside his navel. 

Covering him in their blankets and the warm weight of his body, Eliot kisses him; they make out like they’re teenagers unfamiliar with their own bodies, like they’ll die if they let each other go. Exhausted, they lie together like they used to do after they’d just discovered each other in that second year at the mosaic. Eliot rubs his nose against Quentin’s, nuzzles at him like a big cat, holds the back of his head, the pads of his fingertips flush with his scalp, their feet fitted together like the pieces of a puzzle. 

The majorly fucked up thing is that Quentin feels complete in a way that he hasn’t since he’s been married. There’s no denying that he loves Arielle, that she has a part of him that no one else does. But it’s different with Eliot; it always has been. Quentin can’t describe how, and he doesn’t know all the reasons—he just _knows it_. And _God_ , Quentin wishes it wasn’t like this; if he could reach into the corners of his mind where Eliot lives and remove him, untie all the insidious coppery threads and burn them one by one, he would. The worst thing is that he told Arielle he didn’t want anyone else to be part of their marriage. It was part of the pre-commitment conversation she’d thrust upon him. She’d grilled him about Eliot, told Quentin it was _okay_ if their marriage was an open one. But Ari was pregnant, beginning to show, and he wanted so badly to create the marriage that his parents never had. Eliot had freed him; had told him they were over. He wanted no part of Quentin then.

_I can’t give you what you want, Q._

He thinks about that now, holds the silvery slip of it for an instant, allowing himself to wonder if that was true, if it still is. And why he’d let himself believe it. He wishes now that he’d fought for them, that he’d at least _tried_. He’d had the tiniest shred of an instinct that he was doing the _wrong thing_ , that marrying Arielle was a mistake. Even with the way he loved her. Even with the way he still does.

“Eliot,” he says. The moons rest eerily over the tops of the trees. 

Eliot’s eyes are closed. “Hm?” His hand moves sleepily over Quentin’s back. 

“She deserves to know.”

Eliot is quiet, and Quentin presses his nose to that lovely long neck. He’s missed Eliot’s scent, the solid, masculine feel of his muscles and long bones. 

“I mean, I think we ought to—”

“I heard you.”

Quentin’s stomach flops over, and a sour, burning trickle rises in his throat. “We need to tell her—”

“Tell her _what_ exactly? That we’ve been—” Quentin can feel Eliot gesture with his hand; then it goes back to his shoulder blade. “—fucking in the moonlight?”

“I mean.” Quentin makes a frustrated noise. “Yeah. It’s the right thing to do.”

“You didn’t seem so concerned about that when I sat on your dick this morning.”

“ _Jesus_.”

“What? What do you hope to _accomplish_ with this conversation?”

“So this—you and me—this is just—” Quentin doesn’t know what he’s going for. He feels insane with it, _foolish_. “—a—a—mindless fuck? One of your seasonal flings?” Quentin tries to move, but Eliot doesn’t let him go. 

“Nothing I’ve done to you is _mindless_.” He drags his thumb over Quentin’s bottom lip. Quentin’s body ignites, like street lights flickering on, one after another. “Driven by the body, yes. Mindless, no. Seasonal—astute observation. But, also no.”

“God, fuck _you_ —this is—not, like—it’s not _significant_ to you? It doesn’t warrant talking about? Just swept it under the fucking compost heap—” He tries to move again, pushing back with his legs. Eliot’s hand clamps down on his shoulder. “Like—like—you don’t _care_ enough to—to—”

“Of course it’s fucking _significant_. And it’s because I care about you and your _family_ that this is _done._ Now or the day after tomorrow. Take your pick.”

Quentin shakes his head. No—it’s not like he’s _really_ thought about this, like the _fallout_ , what happens next. There’s sort of a nebulous, bright future where everything _works._ Where Ari thinks their affair is _fine_ , and they can carry on as a family, except that Quentin gets to sleep in whichever bed he wants. And that, even in Fillory, isn’t how life is, especially not for Quentin. It may be a society that permits such things more readily than Earth, but Quentin never received such permission. And Eliot was never approved.

Eliot takes Quentin’s wrist and presses it over his head so his fingers brush against the headboard. His hand twitches reflexively, a shock running through the already lit pathways of his body.

“Take your pick,” Eliot repeats. He noses down the line of his neck, sucking little marks into his flesh that he’ll have to put healing spells on before Ari gets back. Each pulses in time with the tension rising in his body, the stiffening of his cock. Eliot’s tongue goes to the tender, fleshy mound of his armpit, and Quentin lets out a sound midway between a gasp and a moan, struggling against Eliot’s hand. The knowledge that he couldn’t get away if Eliot _really_ wanted to keep him in place fucking _sends_ him, a primal yearning for Eliot to take him and have him how he _wants_ , tease him, hold him down and fuck him until he’s shaking, begging for relief.

“Do you want me to stop now—” Eliot licks at one nipple until it’s crinkled stone-hard and slick with saliva; a gentle undercurrent of need keeping time in Quentin’s veins. “—or should I keep going?”

“ _Please_ ,” Quentin gasps. His breath is coming in rapid short bursts, and he lifts his free hand, placing it next to the other. “Just— _keep going_.” He scrunches his eyes closed, like it’ll make it somehow better that he’s weak, helpless in the wake of Eliot’s desire, the promise of his body.

Eliot is a cataclysm—ruinously hot, irresistible. And _no one_ has ever made Quentin feel like _this_ , pulled tight like an over-tuned instrument, holding him at the precipice of snapping with a single touch. He remembers the first time Eliot fucked him, a few days after their first year anniversary doing this mess of a puzzle. Eliot had, you know, _thought_ Quentin hadn’t “experimented”—Jesus, Eliot is _such an asshole_ —with guys before. Like Quentin was some kind of gay virgin. Quentin didn’t give him the satisfaction of saying, yeah he’d been fucked, but he’d _never_ been fucked like _that_ —his heartbeat scattered, his hips and thighs thrumming, his lips kissed sore, the deep-raw hollowing out and being filled, momentarily released from the prison of his mind.

“There’s my good boy,” Eliot coos, securing his broad hand over both wrists and pinning him to the pillow. His cock is pressed, thick and hot, against Quentin’s thigh. “God, you get me so fucking hard. Fuck, nothing else is _like this_.” He pulls Quentin’s lower lip between his teeth and _sucks_ , grunting into his mouth, pushing his cock against Quentin’s thigh. 

Because he knows what Quentin wants, Eliot automatically falls into the complex little tut he designed when he discovered how much Quentin liked being held down. It makes Quentin’s stomach lurch to think that he might have used it with someone else—but he pushes the thought away as the band of magic settles over his wrists and locks him to the bed. 

Quentin sighs, his body relaxing into the blankets, the solid little core of his anxiety turning to a swirl of rippling, golden liquid. Eliot’s got him, and he doesn’t need to think about anything. He feels Eliot moving his legs apart, performing the spell again on each of his ankles. When the head of Eliot’s cock presses to his lips, Quentin lets out a breath and opens his mouth, taking him to the back of his throat. 

It’s a long time before they fall asleep, and they rise late, eating eggs and toasted bread with their legs stacked together beneath the quilts.

Quentin wants to tell Eliot that he never meant for this to happen quite the way it has. Instead, he takes Eliot’s hand in his, kisses his fingertips. “I don’t think we need to do a design today.”

“No,” Eliot agrees. 

Eliot helps him with the washing and preps their winter clothes for laundering and mending. They finish the spells on the cottage together, their magic colliding, tingling through Quentin’s veins, a strange echo of those first three years together, when it was only them, living side by side. They’re in their secret bubble, a little bright spot of bliss, and Quentin doesn’t mention Arielle again. He doesn’t ask Eliot if it’ll be like this whenever Ari is away. He’s not sure he wants to know.

They spend the next two nights in each other’s arms. On the morning of Ari’s return, Eliot fucks him slow, his fingers buried in Quentin’s hair, lips locked against his neck. It feels less like definitive punctuation at the end of a sentence and more like an ellipsis; to Quentin, at least, there’s so much left unsaid. But Eliot, ever the arbiter of their relationship, makes sure to tell Quentin again: this is done.

~~***~~

The thing is, it’s easy to fall back into a routine. He goes to bed with Arielle at night; he fucks her in their normal ways at their normal times. And he _loves_ her, buries his face in her hair, kisses her breathless the same way he always does. Eliot teaches Teddy games and songs in the mornings, writes letters in the dirt and shows him little spells that make glowing gold orbs float above their heads. 

At night, they sit together around the fire, and Ari and Eliot sing. Sometimes, Eliot tells stories, making Ari laugh, melodic, when he recounts the plot of some romantic comedy he’d watched with Margo. On the outside, nothing has changed. They still do the puzzle and record it, sleep in their separate beds. Some days, Quentin wakes to find that Eliot is gone, and he tries not to notice that he smells different when he comes home, and he doesn't wonder too often if there’s beard burn on Eliot’s thighs.

There are scraps, remnants, of their time together that Quentin can’t shake. Occasionally, Quentin catches Eliot watching him when he’s bent over the tiles, and Eliot doesn’t bother to look away. When Eliot works shirtless in the few remaining warm spells they get, he does more of his yoga bullshit than he ever did before, maybe _definitely_ showing off, and Quentin _stares_. Ari’s usually at the river or at market with Teddy during the day, so it’s not like it matters. When Quentin goes to the woods or the shower to get himself off, he thinks of Eliot more often now. Before it was only like three quarters of the time, and now it’s, well, almost _every_ time. That’s significant, maybe, but it’s not like anyone knows the content of his thoughts. Everything is _fine_. 

It continues to be _fine_ for more than a month, with no sign of turning on his words, even when Ari and Teddy are gone for hours at a time. Quentin thinks this thing will just fade into the background, maybe, that the burn marks will heal. That, sure, he’ll never get _over_ Eliot, but, ultimately, this is the best outcome. The way things should be, each of them in their separate spheres.

Until one day—this day in particular is lovely and warm and crisp, and Eliot strips down to his jodhpurs to finish the puzzle. After he finishes his fucking sun salutations, he saunters away to put some autumn squash in the storage house. When Quentin is done with his weeding and has the laundry sorted, he slinks off, thighs tingling, to work out his bare-chested yoga frustration. He shuts himself in their outdoor shower, throwing up a silencing ward before taking out his cock and moaning as he stiffens up almost instantly in his hand. He doesn’t even take his shirt off, doesn’t undo his pants all the way. He’s been watching Eliot for _hours_ , looking at his ass as he works, watching the muscles in his chest ripple like it’s a fucking movie, _Jesus Christ_. 

Quentin is already dripping precome from his slit when he grabs the base of his cock with one hand, pulling the skin taut as he strokes himself with the other. A hushed moan escapes his throat, and he leans his head back, opening his legs. He’s imagining Eliot, how he looked, piecing that image together with their full last day alone together—how he took Quentin in hand and put him ass up, face down on the mosaic, his head sitting in the cradle of his hands as Eliot fingered him and slid, torturously slow, inside. He’s so hot for it, so _close_ , jerking off hard and fast, crying out as a shock of pleasure extends from the tip of his cock, searing through his thighs, down to the meat of his toes. 

There’s a little clinking at the corner of his awareness, and he realizes it about three seconds too late—the shower door is open, and Eliot is staring at him, at his _dick_ , his eyes growing wide. Quentin makes a garbled sound, and he can’t speak or fucking _think_ , can’t put his dick away or scramble for the towel. Eliot should be backing out by now, but instead, he’s closing the shower door behind him and replacing Quentin’s wards with his more sophisticated honeycombed weave of magic—silencing, obscuring, and blocking. The magic settles into place, and Eliot is between his legs, lips locked on Quentin’s, fingers in his hair. Eliot’s towel falls to the floor, a pool around his knees, his stiffening cock hanging heavy between his thighs. His teeth scrape over Quentin’s collarbone, lips traveling up his neck until Eliot’s nosing at his ear. “Thinking about me?”

“Yeah,” he says, mindless. He ought to—whatever, tell Eliot to go _away_ , but he doesn’t, he _can’t_. His dick is throbbing, a low, persistent ache. Eliot catches his lower lip between his teeth, kisses him violently, growling into his mouth and thrusting forward so that his cock brushes against Quentin’s. 

He slips his thumb between Quentin’s lips, watching with open hunger as he sucks. Eliot grabs his leg, squeezing. “Stand up and turn around.”

Unsurprisingly, Quentin does what Eliot says, and Eliot tugs at the waistband of his trousers until they come loose and fall to his feet. His broad hand plays over Quentin’s back; he picks up Quentin’s arms and places his hands against the polished wooden wall. Eliot’s absurdly large cock is hot against the crease of his ass, and he’s rucking up Quentin’s shirt, brushing his fingers, light, over Quentin’s nipples, pressing kisses along his skin, his tongue gathering up traces of Quentin’s sweat. Eliot’s cock drags along the channel of his ass; Quentin feels the warmth of his precome against the small of his back, and he’s shaking, _trembling_ —he thought he couldn’t have this; he knows he _shouldn’t_. 

“Shush, baby. You’re so good. Been thinking about these pretty thighs.” Caressing his ass almost reverently, Eliot lets out a muffled grunt and shifts, fitting his cock between Quentin’s legs, the tip of his cock peeking out between his legs. “Feels so warm and snug. Didn’t get to have this before. Just this once, huh? Let me come right here—” Eliot’s hand brushes over Quentin’s dick, down over the front of his thighs. Quentin cries out, his body juddering forward, but Eliot hitches him back again. “—then I’ll get you off however you want.” He kisses Quentin’s shoulder, breathtakingly gentle. “Deal?”

Quentin nods, let’s out a strangled moan. 

“I wanna hear you tell me you want this.” He cups Quentin’s dick, presses it hard against Quentin’s body. “Tell me, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, his head hanging down so he can see it—head and foreskin between his legs, Eliot’s huge hand almost entirely covering Quentin’s cock. “Can’t stop thinking about you,” Quentin says miserably, his voice breaking on the last syllable. “Give it to me. _Please_.”

“I forgot how much you love it,” Eliot says, shoving himself deeper between Quentin’s legs, fucking dry between his legs once, then twice. An awed moan falls from his lips, and he pulls back, muttering the little charm that draws moisture from the air, making warm, slippery lube that Eliot drizzles over his cock and spreads, unceremoniously, between Quentin’s thighs. Quentin is _drenched_ , lube dripping between his legs and over the front of his thighs, and Eliot has his hips in hand, thrusting experimentally at first, letting out filthy, shuddering noises. “I forgot,” he murmurs, sucking at Quentin’s neck, “how much you love getting fucked. Until you—” He grunts between thrusts, and Quentin watches the red-flushed head appearing and disappearing beneath Eliot’s hands, the slip of foreskin retracting and swallowing it as Eliot fucks into the dark, tight space he’s created. “—you reminded me—didn’t you, baby?”

Quentin chokes out a sob. Each reckless, feverish thrust sends a shower of sparks over his perineum, through the sensitive, throbbing weight of his balls; humiliation spirals low in his stomach—shame over how _good_ this is, how much he loves being used, a tool for Eliot to get himself off. _These pretty thighs._

“Mmmn yeah,” Quentin says, his voice rough. “ _God_ , s’good.”

“Came in here and I—” He licks Quentin’s neck, crushes Quentin’s thighs together with his hands, making it _tighter_ , each thrust and drag even more intense. “—I saw you, so fucking hot you—you have _no idea_. God, you—you’ve _ruined me_.” He buries his nose in Quentin’s hair, making pained, desperate noises as he pumps his cock between Quentin’s legs. Eliot’s movements grow faster, more intention behind him, and he shouts, driving into him so hard that Quentin almost loses his balance, but Eliot catches him across the chest, the other hand digging into his hips as he hitches forward and comes, spurting against the wall of the shower, over the front of Quentin’s legs. Before he can think, Eliot is dragging Quentin’s shirt off over his head, pinning him against the wall and kissing him, filthy and hungry. Quentin’s lips are smarting when Eliot pulls away, panting.

“What do you want, baby?” Eliot looks wrecked, his pupils blown, his hair sweaty and wild. 

“Your mouth,” Quentin whispers. His neglected cock throbs painfully. 

Eliot sinks to his knees, folded up, long and lean, gazing up at Quentin through long, dark lashes, his lips parted. Better than porn, far more raw and real than Quentin’s fantasies, he wets his lips and licks the head of Quentin’s cock, swirling his tongue over the tip before sucking him down and moaning as he hollows his cheeks, taking Quentin to the root so easily, like it’s _nothing_. The sounds Quentin makes are embarrassing, stupid—Eliot _won’t want him_ again—he thinks it, uselessly—he’s repeating Eliot’s name, fingers playing through his hair as the pleasure builds—and unexpectedly, sudden, jarring, his brain is eneveloped in a cloud-like pink haze as his orgasm bursts through him, and he’s coming down Eliot’s throat, watching his face as he swallows, like he’s _hungry_ for it, like he’s been just as desperate.

He thinks Eliot will probably leave after that, but he doesn’t. He gathers up Quentin’s clothes, spelling them clean and putting them on the high shelf Eliot installed for their towels last spring. “Let’s get cleaned up, love.”

Quentin’s heart does something weird and floppy as he watches Eliot casually flip his wrist, turning on the stream of magic that purifies and heats the rainwater. _Sweetheart_ and _baby_ have always been part of Eliot’s sex friend repertoire—those had returned when Ari was away before _._ Eliot must not realize what he said, must not realize that he’s _never_ called Quentin _love_. Has he—is this a slip of the tongue because he’s said that to someone _else_? Or is it—

He’s not letting himself have the thought that it’s anything else. But the water is running over them, and Eliot pulls him close, kissing him hard and holding him, one long arm wrapped around his back, cradling him like he’s precious. The eddy of guilt swirls inside him, roiling and churning, and he lets out a wounded sound, head against Eliot’s shoulder. 

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re fine. No one—” Eliot’s voice cracks. “Nobody has to know. Just between you and me. I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

Tears keep streaming down his cheeks, mixing with the water. Quentin doesn’t want Eliot to leave him alone, and he’s also really fucking tired of himself not wanting Eliot to leave him alone. God, he’s an idiotic _fool._ Eliot’s brought him to it. Made him insane with it. “Don’t.”

He keeps on kissing Quentin with aching tenderness, reaching for the lavender soap and washing his back, washing him clean. Eliot places his lips to Quentin’s forehead. “Don’t what?” 

“Don’t leave me alone. I’m—” He lifts his eyes to Eliot’s. His head is all fuzzy and empty, his tears cried out; it’s like he’s _high_ on Eliot, the taste of his lips, the thrust of his cock between his thighs. “I want you so much. I care about you. I—”

Eliot scoffs, makes a low frustrated noise, cutting Quentin off. “You don’t. This is a _dalliance_.”

“Ah, yeah,” Quentin says, pushing away. “That makes sense. Why didn’t I think of it before? This is just sex. Makes total sense.”

With a quick tut, Eliot turns off the water and does a quick drying charm over the length of his body. “Yes. What the fuck else would it be?” 

Before Quentin can answer, Eliot slings on his towel and knocks down his ward, leaving Quentin behind in the shower again. 

~~***~~

Quentin isn’t emotionally equipped. He wasn’t meant for this, he can’t do it, and he’s going to have to tell his wife. And then he’ll—what the fuck will he do? He’ll search a portal back to Earth again and leave Eliot in Fillory to fuck all the village apprentices. And that’s—that’s what he’ll do. That’s the logical conclusion of all of this. It makes sense; that’s what he’ll do.

He won’t, he knows. He can’t leave Teddy. He needs to finish the quest. Losing magic was his fault, after all.

“Hey, what do you think of this?” Eliot’s hand is on his shoulder, warm voice in his ear, and Quentin flinches away. He can’t just _do_ things like that. He’s making Quentin lose his actual mind, and he’s showing him a fucking chalk design, like that’s something he _wants_ to see. 

“Um. It’s fine, I guess.” He takes the paper and pretends to look at it. It’s a turtle or a fish or something. “Just as good as any other.”

If this were a _normal_ quest, this would be impermanent, and maybe tomorrow, Eliot could find the key and go home. And he wouldn’t have to think about Eliot anymore or look at his long body or his broad chest or his curls, wild and loose, framing his features. And maybe they wouldn’t have even gotten this far if it were something they could actually accomplish—right? And he wouldn’t have to know, really _know_ , what it feels like when Eliot moves inside him.

Quentin is trapped in hell right now, where Eliot is doting and kind and affectionate some days, his expression almost adoring when he looks at Quentin and—other days, he’s cold and distant, disappearing overnight. Quentin’s stomach is in actual knots—like, all the time. He can’t eat; he’s lost weight and he’s not fucking sleeping. Eliot has told him, in no uncertain terms, that this is over. Well, he’s said that a few times now. Most recently while he was jerking Quentin off in the shower. 

He watches Eliot, despondent, as he sorts the tiles. He’s singing to himself, “Someone to Watch Over Me” and putting together his dumb fucking turtle. 

This might be one of their last warm days before the snow starts; things are quick like that in Fillory. Yellow and red leaves are scattered over the ground, which means Eliot will be going on his hunting trip soon, away for a week or more—maybe that’ll give Quentin a chance to clear his head. 

When Ari and Teddy come back from Market that afternoon, they all sit by the fire and crack open hazelnuts, eating the sweet meat inside. Quentin holds his, looking at their lines, the little patterns of nature. Eliot is sitting across from him, and he keeps staring, the barest hint of a smirk on his face. It’s been a week and a half since they last _met up_ , and Quentin thinks—maybe that _was_ the last time. Or it should be. He thought it might happen again today, but Eliot wandered off after their first design, maybe to look at his reflection in the river or whatever he does when he’s alone.

“Are you taking Quentin with you on your trip?” Ari hands Quentin another handful of hazelnuts, sticking them on top of the five already in his hand. He stares at her blankly before he realizes she’s talking to Eliot.

“I’m, um, _not_ —” Quentin starts.

“Yes, he’s coming with me. We talked about it yesterday,” Eliot says before Quentin can even process what’s happening. “So you can have your cousins.”

“They’re looking so forward to seeing Teddy. It was good of you to suggest that,” Ari says, cracking a nut for Teddy and popping it into his mouth. He crawls into Ari’s lap and looks up at something in the trees, opening his hand to the sky. His _heart_. He _can’t_ keep doing this. 

“That’s not—”

“There’s no room for them when you’re both here,” Ari continues. “Teddy can sleep with me, and they can have the extra beds. I think we’ll be seven altogether. Last time they can come before it gets cold.”

Quentin sighs. Clearly, he’s been conspired against.

~~***~~

“We’ve got to stop,” Quentin says after they cross the river. Eliot is carrying their pack, strapped to his back and at least partly held up with telekinetic magic. It’s still heavy and cumbersome, and Eliot looks _hot_ carrying it; Quentin can’t help thinking about it. How strong Eliot is, how he manhandles him, pushes him around. It’s unhealthy.

“Stop? We left fifteen minutes ago.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh. We’re done. I told you,” Eliot says casually, like he’s talking about scraping vegetable peels onto the compost heap. 

A churning hits the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, okay then.” He doesn’t say anything else. There are clouds gathering in the sky; they hang, pregnant, overhead. If there’s a storm, Quentin hopes it doesn’t last for long. He doesn’t need to be trapped in a tent with Eliot.

The wind is whipping when they get to the vale where Eliot hunts non-talking animals. In the summer and autumn, they get most of their protein from fish. This time of year, they hope for a few rabbits, some squirrels, a small deer that they can smoke and put up in their cold storage, preserved with extra spells. Since magicians are far and few in between in Fillory, their meats are good for bartering, getting them all the things they need to live. That’s what Quentin’s going to focus on—the mission, the _quest_. He can help Eliot bring home _more_ this year—Quentin hasn’t come since Teddy was born. And perhaps, he hopes, they can sort through this _thing_ between them. Quentin doesn’t have to confess his feelings, and Eliot doesn’t have to keep fucking him and breaking it off.

After a two hour hike, they reach the place Eliot likes to set up camp. Eliot sets down the pack and brings out his fastidiously organized pack of snares, ties, a bow and arrow, packs of herbs for spells that lure animals. When Quentin fishes through their bag to get the tent, it’s not there. 

“Uh—where’s the tent? Like the thing we’re supposed to sleep in?”

“Didn’t bring it,” Eliot says, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. _Didn’t bring something to sleep in when it very might well rain or fucking snow, Quentin. Doesn’t that make perfect absolute sense to you?_

“What the _fuck_ , Eliot?”

“ _Please_. We don’t _need_ the tent. I have something better. Use Winthorpe’s Reveal right _there._ ” He points toward a hill twenty feet away. 

Quentin put his ring fingers and thumbs together, focusing on the hill, reciting the charm he hasn’t used in at least five years. “Is that a— _fuck_? Is _this_ what you’ve been doing with your time?”

“Yeah, when I’m not fucking boys in the village, as you’ve pointed out,” Eliot replies, not without an edge to his voice. But Quentin knows that this is a big deal, that he’s seeing this. That Eliot’s actually _showing_ him. 

“It’s not like I’m wrong,” Quentin mutters, still examining the side of the hill. There’s a house built into the side of a hill, with a round wooden door, a framed window with a flower box; a cluster of dying orange mums sits inside. “How do you—how do you _fit_ in there? This is hobbit sized.”

“Well, Q. You know, there’s always a way to make something fit if you try hard enough.” Eliot is organizing the arrows, checking the fletching, making sure everything is put together properly, and apparently pretending that he hasn’t been hiding out in the vale in a home he made, a place apart from the cottage that has no actual room for him.

A heavy, dark weight sits in the center of Quentin’s chest, squeezing and aching. He used to do a lot of thinking about Eliot’s emotional life, a lot of time trying to actually _access it_. In the year before he started seeing Arielle, he worked hard, so hard he lost sleep, to find a way in. “El.”

Eliot meets his gaze, smiling easily for all his sharp words. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Yeah. It—yeah, I do.” He doesn’t ask Eliot why he’s been doing this. He _knows_. And it clicks into place. Eliot’s said—a dozen or more times—that he doesn’t always go to the village. He shows up after long absences from the west edge of the woods, like he was coming back from the river. Quentin thought he must have been seeing someone out that way. “Do you bring anyone here?”

Eliot shakes his head. It’s strange, this kind of honesty, this openness. Here, away from everything—their lives here, their lives from before. He’s keenly aware of some kind of shift, something different in the air between them. “You wanna see it?”

A small nod. “Of course. Yeah.” 

Eliot crouches—the door is maybe six feet tall, a few inches shorter than Eliot—and holds it open for Quentin. Behind him, Eliot murmurs a spell, and golden orbs appear along the ceiling, casting warm light over the interior of the—well, it’s a _house_. A small one, smaller than the cottage by half but like one of those ‘tiny houses’ that were popular around the time they left Earth. The kind of thing rich people built in the woods with a steel storage container and good track lighting. But it’s _Eliot_ , so it’s different—not prefabricated HGTV style, not Fillory shack style. There’s a floor made of sanded and polished wood, set down into the earth so that Eliot can stand. When Quentin steps down into the main living space, he sees a folded mattress in one corner, shelves dug into the wall, skylights built into the ceiling. 

“There’s a wood stove,” Quentin says. There are logs stacked inside, a kettle and a small pot sitting on the burners. “How did you—God, Eliot. How’d you _do_ all of this? This is the middle of fucking _nowhere_.”

“There’s a village about an hour west, close to the east side of Whitespire. Found it when I was out here four and a half years ago, I think. Telekinesis is handy. And I can get here a lot faster when I don’t have an entire house strapped to my back. And a companion with short legs.”

“This is a whole _home_.”

“It has a quaint feel,” Eliot says. He’s kneeling and performing a few tuts to get the fire to light, another to dispel the dampness in the small room. “Even has a semi-functional bathroom like I worked up at the cottage; exits on the other side of the hill.”

“Yeah, wow,” Quentin says because, _wow_. It’s a lot to take in, that Eliot has this whole other little life. For so long, Quentin has imagined that Eliot waltzes from house to house in the village, staying a night or two, here and there. And—he must have been here, maybe even a _bulk_ of that time. “You started this four and a half years ago.”

“Yeah. I found it when you went to Whitespire that one time, right before the Winter Festival.”

Quentin blinks. It’s a vague, almost-there memory—a frantic visit to Whitespire to see if they could find a portal, if they could get some kind of message home—one of Quentin’s _very_ half baked ideas that had led to a massive fight. He’s not surprised Eliot left for the vale when Quentin took off. When he came home from Whitespire, he found Eliot at the cottage, listless and noticeably thinner. He blandly told Quentin to build a life here; take up with Ari. “Found it?”

“Someone used to live here, I think. Not for a long time. It was only a hole in the hill when I first came here. I used Ewing-Schneider’s Expansion to hollow it out enough to stand. I laid the floorboards when I came back, made the mattress and repaired the stove. Covered the walls with Tamaka’s Impermeable Interior—so it’s more like stone than dirt—dug out the skylights. The glass is enchanted to let in twice the normal amount of light.” 

Quentin lets out a little breath through his nose, cutting his eyes at Eliot. “Nerd.” 

“ _Hey_. This is my _hobby_. This is what I did while you were going all _nuclear family_.”

“Yeah—you were doing it _before_ that, though.” Quentin sits down in one of the familiar wooden chairs by the stove; they’re like the ones that Eliot made for the cottage. There’s a lute sitting against the wall by the door. He imagines Eliot, playing music by the fire, singing with no one to hear him. 

“I saw the writing on the wall, darling. No room for me.” Eliot takes one of the wineskins out of their pack, fills the kettle with water and places it on the burner.

“You—you _told me_ —you’re the one—” Quentin lets out a breath, blood rushing in his ears. “It’s not _true_. There was always room for you. Ari was fine with—whatever arrangement. You _know_ that. You chose—to—to tell me we were _done_. And—and— _clearly_ , we weren’t.”

“I don’t want to be an arrangement,” Eliot says. He pulls a jar of tea leaves from one of the recessed shelves above the stove, sprinkles some in two ceramic mugs. When the kettle screams, he pours boiling water over the tea and leaves it to steep.

“Oh.” He doesn’t have a frame of reference, doesn’t _understand_ , even as the pieces of it become clear in his mind. It runs counterpoint to his sense of logic—to think that Eliot might feel something for him, something beyond the physical. He hinted at it when Ari was gone and promptly denied it at every turn. “You never _told me_. I didn’t even—we weren’t in a relationship.”

“No,” Eliot says. Quentin doesn’t know what he’s answering or if he’s answering anything. He hands Quentin a cup of tea.

“And why are you—what is this trip about?”

“We’re stuck in Fillory. Magic is fucked, and we’re not solving that puzzle anytime soon. I think it would be good if we take some space from each other. It’s not far. I can come back twice a month and take over for a few days at a time.”

Quentin blinks, breathing in, breathing out. “What? This is—it’s _our quest._ It’s what we’re supposed to do together. You—you can’t just—do this.” 

“I don’t think you understand.” Eliot stands behind a little table that bears the unmistakable marks of his careful woodworking. “I’m not able to live with you anymore. I need to move on.”

“Eliot, come on.” The room feels like it’s sinking into the earth around him. It doesn’t seem fair to lose Eliot twice. To have him, essentially, vanish. Come around every once in a while to work on the mosaic. 

He hands Quentin his tea, tutting to vanish the wet tea leaves from the bottom. “I’ve thought a lot about this. This is what’s best for me. And for you and your family. I wanted you to see where I’ll be before I leave.”

“You _can’t_ —you’re part of my family— _our_ family—” 

“You should know by now that you can’t have everything your way all the time,” Eliot says, calm and measured. He prepared these words. “We’re done talking about it. We need to set up some snares before it gets dark.”

“Um, okay.” Quentin holds the mug, warm against his cold hands, listening to the fire wood crack in the orange-gold glow of the room. There’s nothing he can say, he knows. He’s too tired to fight it—Eliot never leaves any room for argument.

Eliot finishes his tea in silence and walks outside, heading to the forest beyond the clearing. Quentin does the same in another part of the vale, a heavy pit in the center of his chest.

~~***~~

They eat a mostly quiet dinner of cornbread and smoked fish, and after, Eliot picks up the lute. He plays, without explaining when or where he picked up the instrument, a few Fillorian ballads that Quentin has heard in the tavern. He falls into singing one of the Decemberists songs—‘January Hymn’—that Quentin had played on repeat their first year in Fillory, when charging spells still worked for their phones. He sings, voice rich and pure, the words lonely, nostalgic. That album had come out his first year in college; it felt like _home_ , like a simpler world. He’d played that song again and again when they did their first patterns. Eliot could _tolerate_ ‘that particular sad boy music.’ Quentin knew he secretly _liked_ it—he hadn’t expected Eliot to _remember it_. 

“ _What were the words I meant to say_

_Before you left_

_When I could see your breath lead_

_Where you were going to_

_Maybe I should just let it be_

_And maybe it will all come back to me_

_Seeing, oh, January, oh—”_

After Eliot finishes the last chords and puts the lute back in its resting place, he pulls out the mattress—long and barely big enough for two people. Quentin’s stomach swoops as he watches Eliot arrange the blankets—he recognizes one of them from home—and take off his wrap shirt. He looks to Quentin and gestures to the bed, taking his hand when he steps over. Pulling Quentin down with him, he pushes his hands into Quentin’s trousers, fingers digging into the flesh of his hips, unbuttoning him, rolling him down onto the thin bedding, tugging and rearranging until they’re both bare, clothes discarded on the floor, bodies pressed together, nothing left between them. 

“Kiss me,” Eliot says, pulling Quentin next to him, his face _open_ and almost bright, like this was the thing he was building to, and now he’s done—he said his piece, the words he’d been holding in his mind, and this is his closure. _We’re done_ isn’t relevant; Eliot’s solved that, made up his mind. They might as well have this, if there isn’t anything beyond it.

Quentin kisses him, lips brushing together, sinking and slotting into place, his fingers slipping into Eliot’s curls. He kisses Eliot until they’re both breathless, leg nudged between his knees. Fingertips tracing along the muscles in Quentin’s neck, over his shoulders, down his ribs, over the curve of his backside, the dip of his hip, Eliot studies him in a way he hasn’t since their first weeks together. It’s methodical, this exploration, not fraught with resentment or impatience. Eliot’s lips roam the line of his jaw, descend to his chest, tender and almost _serene_ in a way that Quentin has rarely seen in Eliot. When he takes Quentin in hand, he works his cock in slow, even strokes, their lips locked together, the world blurring out around them as the last vestiges of light fade from the sky, the room black save for the glow of the wood stove and a candle flickering by the window. 

A muttered translocation spell summons thick oil that Eliot must have in the pack or somewhere in the house; a touch spreads Quentin’s legs apart, slowly, fingers pressing into him, reminding him how to open. His nipples go hard as Eliot curls his fingers inside, glancing over the bundle of nerves that sends little currents of pleasure down his legs, the muscles of his pelvis tensing and releasing. His cock jerks beneath Eliot’s other hand, Eliot’s mouth at his pulse point, sucking hard, pleased sounds coming from the back of his throat as he stretches Quentin open, readies his body so Eliot can have him. Overhead, rain begins to pelt at the skylights; a quick burst of lightning illuminates Eliot’s features—his smile, a gentleness to him. Thunder rolls over the forest, the hills and the valley.

“Late for a thunderstorm,” Quentin murmurs. His back arches when Eliot adds a third finger and waits for Quentin to relax around the intrusion. 

“Mm. We’ll have snow next, I think,” Eliot says. “You’re doing so good, baby. You feel so nice.” He presses his nose to Quentin’s neck, places kisses over his earlobe, his brow, the tip of his nose, to his lips again. Quentin is lost in an aching loop of pleasure, blooming in bright waves through his abdomen, his cock aching as Eliot summons more oil and slicks his fingers again and again, until they’re both slippery, the throbbing between his legs nearly unbearable. The room flashes again, and Quentin catches a still of Eliot’s oiled hand playing over his cock, _magnificent_ , hunger etched on his face. There’s a shift in Eliot’s noises after that—from pleased to desperate—as he withdraws his fingers and hitches Quentin’s body up, folding his legs. In the near-darkness, Quentin hears Eliot’s ragged breathing, the slippery-wet sound of his hand on his cock, the muffled grunt when he presses the head of his cock against Quentin’s hole. “You ready for me, sweetheart?”

“Mmmn yeah, _please_.”

“You open up for me—” Eliot gasps when his cockhead slips inside, as he _presses_ , torturously slow, until he’s seated inside. “—so fucking good, so _good_.”

“S’nice. So full,” Quentin mumbles, reaching for Eliot’s neck and pulling him into a kiss, their lips crushing together, drowning out Quentin’s rising need to release the proclamations sitting in his brain. Eliot’s hips stutter against him as he adjusts, knees planted, one arm wrapped beneath Quentin’s hip. 

“I’m gonna miss this,” he said, pulling back and thrusting into him.

“This,” Quentin repeats, gasping as Eliot drives into him, rhythmic. The hair on his arms stands on end, the back of his neck prickles, tingling spreading down until he feels unreal, a shimmering thing, light refracted through enchanted glass, flickering in and out of reality as Eliot fills him, stretches him. Eliot owns him, he thinks. In these lost moments, hidden away in a fairytale house in a hill, he belongs only to Eliot, the rest of his life falling away in wet, broken pieces. There is only this, on and on.

“I’ll miss _you_.” Eliot has his body crowded and pressed down the way Quentin likes, fucks into him in sure, even strokes, illuminated in periodic flashes of lightning, his face cracked open in pleasure, still frames that Quentin can commit to memory before he goes back home. His back arches, head tipping against the pillow, and Eliot latches onto the line of his neck, panting and slipping his hand into Quentin’s hair. “You’re—” Eliot sighs, shuddering, thrusting into him. “—you don’t even know—you’re so _beautiful_ —”

It’s easy for Quentin’s body and mind to get mismatched, overloaded, for the play between emotion and physicality to grow discordant or behave in unpredictable ways. He _aches_ right now, full and split open in his pleasure, his cock leaking against his belly, longing left unfulfilled for years coming to fruition as it unfurls inside—and tears, unexpected, roll over his cheeks, salty and burning. 

Pressing his head to Eliot’s shoulder, he sobs, wracked with the grief of losing Eliot _again_ , stupid enough to let him go the first time, stupid enough not to fight for them, not to listen to the voice that told him it wasn’t _right_ , that his life had gone askew. He can’t regret Teddy; he’ll never regret Ari. But he knows, like he knows his own hands, that he’ll always love Eliot. He’ll always want this; always miss it. 

His muscles draw up tight, searching for release. White light fills the room again, Eliot’s face a stunning mask of bliss, followed by the rolling autumn thunder. A thrumming erotic ache curls through his hips, and he shivers, heels digging into Eliot’s thighs, drawing him in closer. Eliot makes a choked off sound, his hips stuttering as he kisses Quentin and gets a hand around his cock. “You okay, Q? You feel good? I wanna make you—” He moans, lips pressed to Quentin’s cheek. “—make you feel good.”

“Yeah, it feels fucking good _,_ come _on_ —”

Their bodies moving together like one thing, Eliot kisses his cheeks, takes away his tears, his hand working hot and quick over Quentin’s cock. Quentin’s orgasm hits, unwinding all at once, and he cries out, his mind blank and shaken as he spills between them. Eliot digs his fingers into Quentin’s thigh, gasping, hips bucking as he comes buried inside, kissing Quentin hard enough to bruise, his body going slack by degrees as they relax into each other, muscles twitching with the aftershocks of release. Quentin’s breathing slows, lips pressed to Eliot’s shoulder, his hands still around his neck. He wishes he could stay like this, tucked away with time standing still, the rain beating against the skylights, the stove clinking and crackling, Eliot poured into his body, connected eternally. 

“We’re good at that,” Eliot murmurs.

“Yeah. Bad track record with everything else.”

Eliot huffs _._ “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Yeah, well. I could make a list.”

“I bet you could.” His words have an edge to them, but he’s smoothing Quentin’s hair, lifting it and letting it fall through his fingers. When he pulls out, he doesn’t get up, just stays huddled next to Quentin, taking his hand and kissing the back of it. He does a cleaning charm, leaving them dry and a little warmer than before, and he pulls Quentin into his arms, placing a kiss to his forehead.

“El, I—” Quentin screws his eyes shut and sighs, the sound of his breath faltering. “I wanna tell you—it’s important for me to, uh. To say this.”

“Q—”

“No. You—you’ve got everything figured out. You had your speech all put together and _whatever_. So I have a right to tell you that—that I love you and I have for, _God_ , a really long time. I didn’t _stop_. And I’m not going to stop. Whether you believe that or not—it’s—that’s what’s _true_. I’m not expecting, like, a _reply_. I know it’s a big deal for you, showing me this instead of just leaving—”

“I wouldn’t _just leave_ —”

“Just _shut your mouth_ for a second, _Jesus_. I know you wouldn’t. I’m just saying—I know this is hard. Okay?” Quentin wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I wanted you to know—I know that.”

“Okay.” That’s what Eliot says, not that Quentin really expects anything else. But Eliot holds him, tucking his feet beneath Quentin’s legs, pulling the blanket over them and curling their bodies together until they fall asleep.

~~***~~

The next morning, it’s still raining—bits of ice woven in with it, splattering against the roof. Having very little excuse to move from where they are, warm and content, they stay in bed, Eliot rolling Quentin on top of his body, fitting neatly inside him, watching, rapt, as Quentin rides him. Quentin comments he’s too fucking old to be having this much sex, and Eliot rubs a bit of oil mixed with camphor into his legs, working out knots and drawing him into kisses. After dining on some of the crisp brown bread they brought with them, they settle back into bed, Quentin’s head on Eliot’s shoulder, a sense of rightness and belonging filling the scant space between them. 

“I have something for you. A few things I saved,” Eliot says.

“Yeah?” Quentin yawns and tucks into his side. He doesn’t know what he expects when Eliot tuts—maybe one of the jams he makes, a few jars for herbs; the typical gifts they never stopped giving each other, even in the recent contentious years. He definitely _doesn’t_ expect the handful of books that fly over from a low shelf next to the door. They settle neatly next to Quentin, and Quentin sits up, mouth dropping open.

“Happy past four birthdays,” Eliot says, biting his lip, his expression broken open, so vulnerable. “I hope you haven’t read all of them.”

“These are— _how_ did you find these?” He lifts the first book reverently. “These are from _Earth_. I haven’t—haven’t seen one since we found _A Christmas Carol_ six years ago.”

“There’s a bookshop in that little town near here. Children of Earth come through on their way to Whitespire. Got lucky a few times, and—we weren’t exchanging gifts anymore. But I wanted you to have them. No kids’ books. But I’ll keep an eye out for when I—when I visit.” He clears his throat, raises up on an elbow. “That one’s a ghost story. It’s good.”

“ _The Woman in White_. Wow—no, I haven’t read this. And this is—these should be in _museums_ back on Earth.” Quentin picks up _Persuasion_ , checking the date and guesses it must be a third printing, maybe a second. “1833, Jesus. This is ancient even by—whatever year it is on earth. It’s _pristine_.” The cover bears a blue and gold design that looks like rain melting against a window, gold leaf embossed along the spine. He touches the title, the gold embossed _Jane Austen_ , his fingertips running over the ridges of the letters. “This is so fucking cool.”

Eliot’s smile is indulgent, _charmed_ in that way he gets when Quentin is rambling about something—or he used to look that way. It’s been a while since he’s _wanted_ to smile at Quentin. “No dragons in that one, but it’s—hm. I really liked that one. I hear the author’s good.”

“I’ve heard good things.” Quentin lifts the other two volumes— _Wuthering Heights_ and _Anna Karenina_. “It’s been ages since I read these. I think I’ll, you know, appreciate them more now.”

“I’ve been on the hunt for _Frankenstein_ and the like. Just haven’t gotten quite that lucky. Seems like the children passing through haven’t been much for early science fiction or horror. No H.G. Wells.”

“I—yeah, I guess. Keep an eye out. I’m—” Something in his chest twists and tightens, the back of his throat sore and dry. “I’m just—blown away, I guess. That you found these. That you were—thinking about me.”

“I’m always thinking about you, Q.”

Quentin blinks back tears. He doesn’t understand how his life, at thirty-three, looks like this. In all of his imaginings, he expected the tumult of youth to fade, that he’d be better at seeing himself, the things he really _wanted_. That he’d be better, somehow, at getting them. Instead, he’s here in the final throes of an affair, having betrayed his wife, his family. 

The thing is, he guesses, it’s more complicated than just getting what he wants. He wants more than one thing—a life with Ari and Teddy, an enduring, quiet love, a commitment at his core. He wants to give all of himself, honest and true and adoring. But he wants Eliot, _too_. The suffocating, burning passion, the consuming hunger. It’s not _just that_. He wants a real relationship with Eliot, stolen moments like these where Eliot is just Eliot, not a performance for anyone else. He wants to be the one who sees this, the only one who _gets to_.

“Well, I’m glad, I guess,” Quentin says, taking a breath in. “I wish. That it wasn’t like this. That you just—didn’t want me.”

“That’s not the way of things.” Eliot puts a hand to Quentin’s waist, stroking his thumb along the ridge of his hip bone. “I don’t regret it. I don’t—I think that’s the worst thing. I don’t regret that I’ll always remember this, that I know—” Eliot stops, his eyes searching the ceiling. “—that I know how you feel. But I can make a good choice _now_. Even if I wouldn’t go back and change any of it. I’m used to being alone. I can give you that.”

Quentin slumps down next to Eliot, curving into his side, anguish pulsing inside him like a living thing. If he holds on long enough, he thinks, maybe, he’ll figure out a way to stay here, to make Eliot come home, make it all _work_. Eliot holds him while he cries; Quentin buries himself in the blankets, clinging, holding onto the small acknowledgment of Eliot’s love, the treasure of what Eliot wants for him. 

The next day, it’s clear again, and they go about the work they came here to do. Again, Quentin is faced with his final two nights with Eliot. There’s no ellipsis now, only a period at the end of a long, sad sentence. When he gets home, he’ll begin a new chapter, mending the pieces of his heart that he broke so willingly. 

~~***~~

Two mornings later, Quentin sets out for the mosaic without Eliot. He didn’t tell Eliot, but he doesn’t exactly regret it, either—the affair. He doesn’t regret knowing that the things he felt in the first three years here were real, even if Eliot worked at every turn to hide it. His love is reciprocal; knowing that feels like enough. He hopes, for Eliot, that his affection dies out with distance, that he finds someone, that he’s smart about showing how he feels.

The pack, enlarged and lightened with a crafty little spell that should last until he gets home, is laden with their catches, spelled to stay fresh. It should be enough for the winter, and Eliot will be living in the center of a fertile hunting ground free from sentient, social beasts, close enough to a town where he can get fresh produce, not far from a stream where he can fish. Eliot knows how to get by better than Quentin does; he’ll build a home that makes sense. And when the key appears, _if_ it does, he’ll go to Eliot, get him back to Earth. They’ll be separated for good if that happens, a thought that makes Quentin’s chest _burn_.

Ari looks at him in shock when he gets home, her eyes growing wide as he unloads his pack, full of rabbit and squirrel. “Where’s Eliot?”

Teddy’s already running for the woods, looking for Eliot, and yeah, this is—he _can’t_ do this. He doesn’t understand why he thought he could, why he thought he’d be _okay_ , coming back without him. 

“He’s—he’s got a little house,” Quentin says, his breath hitching, the taste of salt filling the back of his throat. “Up in the vale where he hunts. He’s taking some—some space.” 

“He is? He’s not coming back?”

Quentin begins taking apart his pack, putting out their catches on the long table, renewing the spellwork with tuts that make his hands feel tired. “Uh, no. Not right now. Maybe once every few weeks but I don’t—I don’t really know.”

This wasn’t the conversation he’d planned out so painstakingly on the hike back to Plum Hill. The explanations he held in his mind fail him now in the wake of Arielle’s gaze, sharp and intelligent, coming to understanding far quicker than Quentin himself had.

“And why’s that?” Ari’s lips draw to a thin line, and she looks at Quentin, _really_ looks at him.

He feels—blank. Where there should be relief, there is none. Teddy is shouting for Eliot, wandering to the edge of the hill, his little voice tinged with desperation. 

“He needs some space,” Quentin repeats. Yeah, there’s the regret, coming in hard and quick, a thick deluge. It all hurts—everything _hurts_. He’s sore, didn’t sleep last night, not really. Eliot wouldn’t let him go, having revealed the true nature of his need after so many years, the soft underside of his desire. He had Quentin twice in the night, their bodies moving together for a final time just before dawn.

And Ari is staring at him while his heart capsizes and sinks. “What did you do?”

“It’s complicated,” he says. He empties the rest of the pack, noting the absence of Eliot’s teas, his oils. The further he is from Eliot, the more this seems like an unacceptable loss, something he won’t survive. 

“Where’s Eliot?” Teddy tugs at the hem of his shirt. 

Ari, hands on her hips, looks at him meaningfully, her expression _grim_. His heart clenches, and he knows, like a veil being lifted, that she already comprehends the outline of what he’s going to say. “You’ll have to tell Teddy something,” she says. Her hands fidget and shake, the way they do when someone has _crossed her_.

“He’s taking a trip, bud. He’ll be back to visit soon. A few weeks.”

“Will he be back tomorrow?”

“Um, not tomorrow. A little while longer than that.” 

Teddy nods solemnly, his gray eyes fixed on Quentin. “I’ll make him a present for when he gets back.” 

Quentin closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath. “Yeah, you—you do that. He’ll really like that.” 

Teddy gallops off to his ‘work station’ at their table, taking out paints and a flattened piece of bark that Eliot had enchanted to work like canvas. Everything here has Eliot’s mark on it—he’s made or improved all of their furniture, Teddy’s toys, the shower, the expansions for the cottage, the daybed and the group of spells that keeps it temperate. Inescapable. 

“Explain,” Ari says. He slumps in one of the chairs by the firepit, looking behind him to make sure that Teddy’s out of earshot. His gut churns, a hungry, hollow agony, pulling _down, down, down_. 

“I mean, I—” Quentin pushes a loose bit of hair behind his ear. He’s made fucked up choices; he’s made his own bed, slept in it with someone who doesn’t belong to him. “I fucked up.” He wipes his palms against the scratchy wool of his pants, sweat gathering in the centers of his palms. “I—it’s on me. It’s not Eliot. I blamed him—before. But it was—I started this. And—Eliot he—he’s—this isn’t his fault.”

Ari’s face falls, her hands dropping to her sides. She sits in the chair across from him, her hands clutching at her dress, knuckles white. “I told you a long time ago—”

“Ari—wait, let me—”

“—that I didn’t care if you kept Eliot as your lover. But _you said_ it was done. That there was no commitment, that it was never serious—”

“ _Please_ —I made a big fucking mistake—”

“No. You’ll hear me on this.” She leans forward in her chair, her voice edged with ice. “I might be born from this world, but I am not stupid.”

“I know. I know you’re not.” 

“You think I don’t know how Eliot feels about you?”

“I didn’t know how Eliot feels about me,” Quentin says miserably.

Ari shifts in the chair, lets out a shaky sigh. “Then you’re a fool,” she says, her voice hoarse. “I’ve seen how he watches you. The men he’s with—they _look like you_. I never said anything because—I love him, too. He’s our family. I _thought_ he was our family. But you—” Her voice _breaks_. “—the _both of you_ decided to hide away, hide yourselves away _from me_. Like I _shouldn’t_ know.”

“ _Please_ , I—” He doesn’t know what he’s asking. His throat clicks when he swallows, clogged and broken. “I’m—I should have told you.”

“I wouldn’t have cared about you _wanting him_. I would have told you to have your fun. But you took away my choice—that’s the worst of it.” She shakes her head, burying her fingers in her hair, looking away. Tears stream over her cheeks; she’s quiet when she’s like this, her pain a contained storm. Later, he knows she’ll scour the kitchen, driving her anger out through work.

Quentin doesn’t try to defend himself. He lets out a wet sigh and looks down at his knees. “Yeah. We did—we fucked up.”

“What is it that you want?” When Ari looks up, her eyes are red, her copper-tinged lashes wet. 

He wants to—needs to—say that he just wants it to be the three of them, here together, that Eliot’s plan will _work_. He’ll stay away and live his own life, and he can go home when they get the key. But—he won’t—he can’t say it. He wants things back the way they were, before this all exploded. “I don’t know.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I—I am. I’m _sorry_.” He bites his lip, bends forward, head to his knees, sobbing, wet, against his trousers.

Ari stands and goes inside. That night, Quentin sleeps in the daybed alone, reviewing a catalog of therapy techniques, slowly rolling them over in his head as he tries not to lose his mind.

~~***~~

Things are better, after a fashion, in the weeks following. He’s been trying to make up for all of it in the ways he can—finishing the weatherproofing on the cottage, building the fire every morning, finishing a design early, making sure the floors are swept, the garden free of weeds. He fields Teddy’s sorrowful pleas to see Eliot, to go visit him. _He’ll come back around. He’ll see us again. He’s on his way soon._

He knows it’s not _enough_ ; nothing he does is enough. He feels lucky that they’re sleeping in the same bed for now, that she’s tentatively sitting with him at night by the fire, that they’re talking. He can’t keep apologizing; the words, repeated again and again, have lost all meaning. She knows—and he knows he can’t keep saying it. 

The notable thing is that Eliot _doesn’t_ come back. Maybe— _maybe_ it’s better this way, with the two of them and Teddy, their friends coming through every once in a while, going to Market in the afternoons and baking bread for dinner. But there’s this big, important thing missing, a thing he took for granted. And Eliot is probably happier without them, might have taken up with one of the apprentices in the little town with the bookstore, and he’s—he’s probably happier not being around Quentin, who didn’t love him well enough, who loved someone else, realizing too late what Eliot meant to him. 

He’s not any good at loving people. He goes about his day, pushes Eliot out of his head, does the designs, numb, falling into sleep each night worn out from missing him. When Eliot floods back into his mind, he lets himself crave his touch, in secret, like a drug.

A month passes with no word from Eliot, frost covering the ground in the mornings. Looking at the sky, he worries that Eliot might get trapped in his hillside house if it snows. Ari sees him watching the sky and touches his shoulder with a cool hand. Violet is hitched to the cart, standing at the edge of the hill, toward the village.

He kisses her casually, a peck just next to her lovely pink lips. “Going to Market today?” His words, when they come out around Ari now, all sound stilted. Too cheerful, all small talk.

“Yes,” she says. “I think Teddy and I are going to visit Mother and Father before the first snow.”

“Oh yeah? How long this time?” He puts his hand to the small of her back. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t lean into his touch, either.

“I’m really not sure. I think—I think we might stay a while.” Her voice falters at the end, darkness passing over her features. 

“That’s, uh—” He moves his hand to her shoulder; this time, she pulls away. Cocking his head to the side, he lets his hand fall. He’d been in _fixing this_ mode for more than a month now, making sure he did all the right things, said the right words, made up for his failings. “You’re totally right—you need some time. That’s fine—I can give that to you. But I want—I wanna make this _work_. I want to do—I’ll do whatever you need.” The pleading in his voice breaks through, his words cracking around the edges. “I just—please tell me you’ll come back.”

“I don’t think I can tell you that,” she says, very quiet.

Quentin stands in the cold, watching the fire with its endless sparks, the world spinning on around him when everything is ending. It makes sense that he should cause something like this, an irrevocably damaged person with an irrevocably damaged life. He’d torn it all apart himself. Alone here with this fucking puzzle, in perpetuity, each day the same. Except it can’t be—he can’t let it be like this.

“ _Please_ —I—I’m _sorry_. I’m _so sorry_. I don’t want to face the fucking _world_ without you.” His eyes sting with fresh tears. 

“You—you’re not _hearing_ me.” Her voice is low. She glances over her shoulder at Teddy. He’s sitting by the fireplace, making little piles of acorns and pine cones, feasts for the wooden animals that Eliot gave him when he turned three. “I love you. And I know—I do know you love me. But that’s not _enough_. I’m not the one you—not the person you want. I can’t spend my life with a man who’s in love with someone else. I need— _better_ than that.”

Part of him feels like it’s sloughing off, falling away, like the dead bark of a tree, exposing the dangerously tender, diseased wood beneath. “I love you. I love you—beyond _measure_. Please stay. You know this won’t—I’ll never do anything like this again.”

“I know. But—” She pauses, silent tears falling over her cheeks. “I’ve made up my mind. You’ll have equal time with Teddy.” 

“That’s—this _can’t_ be happening.” He remembers it well when his parents split—clean, a tidy divorce, his mother leaving for a different life. He remembers being so angry at his dad that he didn’t _fight_. But there’s not much to fight, not when she puts it like that. He wonders vaguely if there are any divorce laws in Fillory, if he’ll need to go somewhere to sign a form. Tears travel over his cheeks, his throat dry and raw. “I’ll—if you want to come back—” He tries to choke the words out.

“I’ll be back so that Teddy can see you,” she says.

“I’ll, uh,” he chokes out, “be here, I guess.” He watches them pack, shoulders shaking as he weeps quietly, sitting curled up in one of the chairs by the fire. More a ten year old kid, less a man in his prime. This is what he deserves for pushing on the doors inside himself that weren’t meant to be reopened. 

He hugs Teddy before he lifts him onto the cart, his sweet boy who can’t possibly understand what’s happening. He holds it together until they disappear over the hill. 

It’s a blur, after that, what happens, but he knows he opens a bottle of blackberry wine and crawls into bed before the sun sets. Sometime in the night, it begins to snow, spreading a thick, white blanket across the landscape. Before dawn, he awakes, his head throbbing, aware that his throat is sore, his nose running. He uses that as an excuse not to get up as the snow falls outside. 

The second day of snow and illness, he starts reading the books that Eliot gave him, making it through all four before he realizes he’s only moved to go to the bathroom and get water—he maybe hasn’t eaten since Ari left. He can’t entirely remember. He’s not sure how many days have passed, and he _thinks_ it might be beginning to thaw. He keeps coughing and he might have a fever—the room is bright and wobbly, and it’s hot behind his eyelids, the rest of his body cold. He’s alone, so entirely alone; he rereads _Persuasion_ , forces himself to eat a slice of stale bread and a withered-looking apple. 

On what might be the fifth day, he falls asleep to bright, strange dreams. In them, the mosaic is made of foam, sticky and spongy. When he lies down on it, it sucks him down whole.

~~***~~

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ.” A cool hand on his forehead, a long sigh. He hears the stacking of wood in the fireplace, a kettle steaming, the smell of broth simmering. 

He opens his eyes when the hand comes back, thumb brushing over his temple. He blinks, eyes gritty, coughing, a searing pain shooting through his upper chest. The first thing he sees are Eliot’s curls, which only serve to _actively piss him off_. The second thing he sees is Eliot preparing a cup of broth, adding herbs, performing a little chant over the steaming liquid. 

“I’m _fine_. I was taking a nap,” he croaks. He drank water yesterday, maybe. He’s sure he’d be okay if he just _slept,_ sank down into the bed without the rancor of his nightmares. For Quentin, that’s probably a lot to ask, but he’s _fine._

“Yeah, I can see that. How long has that nap been going on? The snow in front of the door hasn’t been cleared.” 

“I don’t know. A week?”

“Have you eaten?” 

“A little.” He groans, pressing the tips of his fingers to his eyes. “Why the fuck are you here?”

“Because I came back to work on the puzzle. And I found you, asleep in the middle of the day, looking like _garbage_ —”

“Thanks.”

“—and Arielle and Teddy are _gone_. She’s at her parents’?” There’s an edge of caution in his words. 

“She knows. She knew before I even said anything. She’s known for a while—I mean. About the feelings part. Or maybe you can, like, gleefully deny it all again. For like, the next five years.” He blinks at the wavering light in the room. Eliot’s face is—he can’t read it. He’s stunning, though, blinking in and out of focus.

“She _what_?”

“Your idea was stupid. She left anyway. Congratulations, I’m miserable,” Quentin says, falling back on the bed and covering his head with a pillow. “Now please go the fuck away.”

“No.”

“Go. _Away_.” He coughs into the mattress. “I don’t want you here.”

“Too bad,” Eliot says. “It just started snowing again, and obviously, you need someone to make sure you don’t _accidentally die_. All the _time_.”

“You’re not my chaperone,” Quentin says. The dark beneath the pillow is spinning in circles. He can’t exorcise the memory of Eliot’s face when he left the vale—dark circles beneath his eyes, a studiously casual pose against the door. Does he look like that now? He can’t tell. Pain drums at his temples. “I hate you—go _away_.”

“Definitely not. Wish I could go away? Definitely yes.” 

Quentin groans and pulls the pillow tighter over his ears. He’d thought so much about Eliot, _worried_ for him, shut away in his little house in the wild, _wanted_ him—God, how he’d wanted him. He feels now like his insides have been scooped out, all that wanting replaced with pain, confusion, anger. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he huddles beneath the blankets, his consciousness graying out to the sounds of Eliot tending to the home he left five weeks ago. 

He wakes—he doesn’t know how much time later. The sun, what little of it there is, casts its icy white light just above the tops of the trees. Late afternoon, maybe. When he pulls the pillow away from his face and sits up, he sees Eliot reading in one of their living area chairs, one long leg crossed over the other, wearing his dumb, huge house slippers made of white shearling. 

“You look like a yeti in those fucking shoes.”

“Good morning to you, too, my prince. So glad I came for a visit.”

Quentin makes a frustrated noise and presses his forehead to the cold windowpane. “You just didn’t think—did you—what this would do to us.” His breath fogs up the window with a fine mist.

“You didn’t seem to have any objections before,” Eliot says airily. Quentin can hear Eliot getting up and banging around the room; water pouring, cups clinking. 

“I think you’re, uh, misremembering. You didn’t leave room for argument. You never fucking do. You just—made this life change and didn’t think it through.”

“Maybe you were too fucked out to realize I _did_ consider the complexity of my decision, or maybe you’re just a dick. I was doing the right thing.” He hears a chair scrape across the floor. Eliot’s eyes are on him when he turns. 

“The _right thing_ —leaving me to deal with a kid losing a family member. And my wife—who immediately knew something was like, irrevocably fucked.”

“However much you hate me—you need to drink this.” He places a steaming mug Quentin’s hands. “It’s Dowson’s Healing.”

“I’m aware of what it is.” Quentin sips at the broth—it tastes like homemade chicken noodle soup without the _stuff_ in it, and as much as he hates to admit it, he couldn’t eat solid food right now. Warmth spreads through his chest, dulling the pain he’s been carrying there. “S’good.”

“You need to drink it all.”

“I _know._ ” He wants to hurl the cup at Eliot, but it’s just the right temperature—savory and spicy, warming to his core. Eliot is— _ugh_ , predictably—talented at potion making. Brilliant at adapting Fillorian herbs and other ingredients, breezily skilled at remembering the incantations taught at Brakebills. His hands, deft and precise in casting. A thread of longing surfaces when he meets Eliot’s gaze; a small crease sits between his brows, open concern as he watches Quentin. 

“You have bronchitis. This should fix you up in a few days.”

“Uh. Thanks.” He frowns. “I would have been _okay._ Without you.”

“Oh?” Eliot raises an eyebrow. “You’re not in a self destructive spiral?”

“I’m— _no._ I was sick. Am sick. I was—self care. Sleeping.”

“If it’s clear tomorrow, I can attempt a few designs. I’ll go when you’re better so you can—”

“You’ll _what_?” Quentin blinks and dabs at his eyes, like if he clears away the sleep, Eliot will start saying shit that makes actual sense. Or—

“I’ll _go_ when you’re better.” Eliot puts his fingers to his temples like he’s buckling in for Quentin to be _exhausting_. 

“Jesus Christ.”

“Tell me—what is it that you think I should do? Wait around to see if your wife doesn’t come back?” Eliot narrows his eyes, makes a frustrated gesture that Quentin knows all too well. He’s cutting off Quentin, like he’s _done_.

“She’s _gone_ , Eliot. She—she needs something—more than what I can give her. And maybe—maybe she and I can be friends? But we’re not going to work. She’s not coming back. I’ll have Teddy half the time or whatever she works out—she’s not taking him away.” He takes a shaky breath; something rattles in his chest. Moving on from Eliot was, will always be, impossible. His gaze is frank and searching like he’s reading Quentin’s words as he speaks them.

“So I should just—what? Take over _her spot_?” 

“God, you have _no idea_. That’s not—that’s _never_ what you’ve been to me. You’re not like a companion replacement—” He grits his teeth, chest _aching_ as he watches Eliot’s expression move from indignant to _sad_ , resigned.

“That’s definitely what you’re offering up, Q. ‘My wife left. I can’t bear to be alone. Be the next best thing.’” He waves his hand dismissively again, leaning back in his chair.

“You’re not the _next best thing_.” 

“Enlighten me. What is it that you think you’re offering me?”

“God—another _chance_. You pushed me away when I started seeing Ari. And it was over for good when she got pregnant. I get that. It seemed like I was going all in on a life with someone else—when I just—I married her thinking you _didn’t want me_. I built a life around the idea that you didn’t want to be with _anyone_ long term.”

Eliot doesn’t respond; he just sighs, adjusts the tie on his wrap shirt, avoiding Quentin’s gaze. 

“You’ve gone out of your way to fucking—maintain your _single lifestyle_. Or have you replaced me with another apprentice?” Quentin says, and yeah, that does it.

“See,” Eliot says blandly. “Another reason I’m no good. You’re simply not thinking _clearly_. You don’t want—”

“No—you don’t get to—you don’t get to pull that shit with me. You don’t get to tell me what I don’t want. You— _you_ pushed me away. You fucking broke my heart. I thought—it was my best bet to be with Ari. Be a—a responsible father. Like my dad. And I love her—I always will. But she’s gone and I don’t blame her.” Quentin sighs and puts his fingertips against the condensation on the window pane. 

“Listen—you need something I _can’t give you._ ”

“No, you _listen_. I can’t stop loving you the way I do. I’ll always— _always_ love you more than anyone apart from Teddy. I’ll always _want you_. I’ll always want you as the _primary_ , like number one person in my life.” His eyelids are still heavy and hot, but he thinks he’s conscious enough to get through this, even if Eliot rejects him again.

“Are you done?”

“Um. No. Actually.” He takes a quick breath, lets it out slow. “You should _stay_. Like a real relationship. Fucking man up and love me. If that’s something you want, you’d be really stupid not to at least, like, give it a shot.”

“You’re done— _now_?”

“Yeah. I’m— _here_ ,” Quentin says. He hands Eliot the mug, and Eliot absently puts it on a shelf next to the bed. “I’m done.”

“You sure?” Eliot looks _stricken_ , like he’s been caught off guard, for just a moment before returning to his carefully neutral expression. Honestly, a difficult feat since Eliot annoyingly always has an answer to _everything_. 

“Yeah. I guess. No, _wait_.” Quentin lets a breath out through his teeth. “I mean. Here’s the thing—I’m—I’m still not _okay_. I don’t know when I’ll be like, done grieving this. I’d rather do it with you here with me.” He reaches for Eliot’s hands, and Eliot leans forward, _finally_ , Quentin scooting so he’s a few inches from Eliot’s face, their fingers entwined. “I know that’s a weird, complicated way to feel about someone. We’ve got a weird, complicated history. But I want _you_. Fuck, I want you more than I’ve _ever_ wanted anyone.”

“You weren’t done. Are you done now?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Q—”

“Don’t say no,” Quentin says quickly. His senses might be dulled by illness and exhaustion, the drowsy warmth of Dowson’s Healing, but he feels all at once unbearably _present,_ his heart pounding in his ears. 

“I’m not saying _no_. Not exactly.” Eliot squeezes his hand, leans forward, and brushes his lips against Quentin’s forehead. “I love you, too. But that doesn’t mean that this is the _right_ thing. I’ve fucked up every relationship I’ve had. You’re not _thinking_ —”

“You only need to be good at one.”

Eliot sighs heavily, his expression growing distant again, like he’s shutting the door to his house inside the hill, shutting himself away from the world. “This isn’t me. As much as I want it to be. And I _do_. Trust me when I say I’m not good for you. I don’t _want_ to say no. But I _should_.” 

“Yeah, but. That’s bullshit. You don’t get to say that if you haven’t _tried_. You can’t—fucking knock a house down if you haven’t even tried to build it.”

“That doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense.” He puts his hand to Quentin’s forehead, his brow furrowed. “You’re burning up, Q. Uncle Eliot says we need to table this conversation. You’re also probably _high_ from the antitussive in that potion. So you really don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Yeah but.” Quentin stares at Eliot’s face, really _stares_. The late afternoon light is hitting just right, bathing Eliot in a shower of golden light. For all his pissy, bitchy bullshit, his refusal to _hear_ Quentin, he’s still a king. Still the most beautiful, the most precious, person Quentin’s ever known. “I’ve fucked up _so much_. I fucked up my relationship with Alice—and I blamed _you_ for it because I’m a dick. And I fucked up _everything_ here, even though it’s supposed to be, like, this idyllic fantasy world where I thought I would _fit in_. But I know—I know if you _let me_ , I’ll _always_ love you.” 

Eliot cups his cheek, his hand cool, calloused from woodworking and playing the lute. “You’re so sick, baby. Come on. You need to sleep now.”

“Your hand feels good,” Quentin murmurs, closing his eyes and pressing his face to Eliot’s fingertips. 

“You need to go back to sleep. Tomorrow, you’re going to shower.”

“You can shower me anytime,” Quentin mumbles. 

“I think this is going to be a pretty tame shower,” Eliot says gently. 

“S’what you think.” Quentin wants more than anything to keep talking, to _convince_ him, but he’s flagging, and Eliot is helping him down to the pillow, pulling the covers over him. He’s not charismatic or charming like Eliot; he’s not a wordsmith. He doesn’t make things, and he’s pretty shit at hunting and fishing, and he can’t cook anything besides bread and fried squash. His best work happens behind the scenes, in tending to the foundation of this life—mending roofs and pressing insulation into the cracks, building a safe house, making sure it _keeps running_. On the cusp of falling asleep, the thought hits him—Eliot _is_ an essential part of what he’s—what _they’ve_ —built. There’s no hearth to his home without Eliot.

He’s vaguely aware of Eliot crawling into bed next to him after the sun goes down, his heart beating against Quentin’s back, warm and reassuring beneath the blankets as the silent snow falls on and on outside.

~~***~~

Sometime after dawn, he wakes with Eliot’s arm draped over his hips, casually possessive. His head is clearer now, not strangely fuzzy and bright like it was the night before, and Eliot’s breathing steadies him. He takes that lovely, large hand in his and kisses over his knuckles until Eliot stirs beside him. 

“Morning,” Quentin says.

“Morning,” Eliot repeats, groaning and stretching as he pulls Quentin closer. That’s a good sign, right? Quentin turns so his face is close to Eliot’s. He opens one eye and looks at Quentin, a softly amused look on his face. “How’re you feeling?”

“Good. Better.”

“You need to eat today. Real food.”

“I will,” Quentin says. He touches Eliot’s face, tucking a dark curl behind his ear. One corner of Eliot’s mouth tugs up into a little smile. “And you’ll be here.”

“I’ll be here,” Eliot says. 

“I know you said you’ll stay until I’m better.” 

“Yeah. I said that.” Eliot sounds careful and measured in that way he has when there might be an emotion involved, when he’s on the border of actually feeling a feeling. 

“You should stay. For good,” Quentin says. “I meant everything I said yesterday. All of it.”

“Do you have another soliloquy prepared?” He strokes Quentin’s hair, fingertips massaging into his scalp, sending shivers down his spine.

“Bold of you to assume I ever have anything prepared.”

“Hm, yeah. It makes more sense that your speeches were all off the cuff.” Eliot laughs, not quite cheerful, but not as far away as he felt the day before. 

“Doesn’t make it less true. I love you. I want you here. You don’t have to say yes, just. Think about it.”

Eliot lets out a long, shuddering breath. “This world. It isn’t even _our_ time. What happens when we go back?”

“I think about that, and um—I know it’s real. The things I’ve fucked up are _real_. The good things we’ve done— _Teddy_ —that’s all real. The happiness and the sad shit and all the fights and Ari leaving. That’s just as real as Brakebills or the quest or the keys. And if we go back tomorrow or in like, sixty years, I’m going to love you. You can’t _stop_ that. I’ll _always_ fight for you. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t want _this_.” He slips his hand around the nape of Eliot’s neck, presses their lips together and kisses him, chaste, pulling away to look, to watch and maybe glean Eliot’s thoughts.

“I can’t give you any big promises, Q. I’m so _broken_.”

“Fucking—join the club. Say you’ll _try_.” 

“I can try,” Eliot says, three words that are, perhaps, equal—or maybe better—than _I love you_.

Eliot strokes his hair until he’s on the border of sleep again, kissing him and murmuring things he can’t quite hear as the sun rises above the trees. Everything has been ripped up and changed—he’s the one to blame for it, he knows. But he’s tucked into Eliot, away from the world, safe and whole for now.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna hear me scream about Magicians et al on Tumblr, I'm at [@hoko-onchi-writes](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hoko-onchi-writes). On Twitter I'm [@asavvymama](https://twitter.com/asavvymama), but I'm not there as much.


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